95 points•119 comments•22h ago•by lerno•c3-lang.org ↗

Unsigned sizes: A five year mistake

C3 has historically used unsigned sizes, but this approach created bugs in loops, comparisons, and arithmetic when unsigned and signed values interacted. The author describes moving to signed sizes by default to reduce implicit conversions and simplify reasoning about code, noting that unsigned arithmetic can hide errors and that languages like Go and Java have adopted signed sizes. The article explains the motivations, the pitfalls of unsigned arithmetic, and the resulting simplifications in C3's codebase.

Discussion (119)

No comments yet

Top
Trending
New
For You
Bookmarks
Dossier