Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by mjs01 36 days ago
Integer promotion seems to be the source of many signed integer overflow UB. Why does C have it? Does integer promotion ever have a good part?
1 comments
saagarjha 36 days ago
Yes, it simplifies a lot of code that would otherwise be littered with casts.
link
peterfirefly 36 days ago
Could be fixed by having a nicer casting syntax (like Rust) or by not having so damn many scalar types that are used in practice.

"Explicit casts only" worked fine in Modula-2, which doesn't have as many scalar types.

link
saagarjha 35 days ago
Yeah most modern languages settle on having fewer types that are used most of the time and don't require as many casts.
link