Re: unsigned to int assignment

From:
"James Kanze" <james.kanze@gmail.com>
Newsgroups:
comp.lang.c++.moderated
Date:
Sun, 25 Mar 2007 07:13:40 CST
Message-ID:
<1174823707.485399.124710@p15g2000hsd.googlegroups.com>
On Mar 25, 4:17 am, John Doe <NOTOSPAMjohndoe64...@yahoo.com> wrote:

We all know unsigned ints may contain larger values than a common int
can hold. I want to know which parts of the standard cover the assigning
of unsigned ints to int and whether

int i = 2^32 - 1;

is legal, does not result in undefined behavior. Of course, calculate
2^32 yourselves first :)


(I presume by 2^32, you mean 2 raised to the 32nd, and not
literally 2^32, which is 34.)

The first thing to point out is that the value of 2^32 is not
necessarily legal in a C++ program; the largest value that an
implementation is required to support is 2^32-1. This will
change with the next version of the standard, however, where
implementations will be required to support at least 2^64-1.

The second point is that unless one of the values is specified
as octal or hexadecimal, or a U suffix is present, the
expression always has a signed integral type. If it doesn't fit
into any signed integral type, it is an error (and I think that
the compiler is required to diagnose it).

I rather suspect, however, that you were asking about something
like:

     int i = std::numeric_limits< unsigned >::max() ;

In this case, the results are implementation defined; the C
standard makes it clear that one possible result is an
implementation defined signal.

Note that this is different than something like:

     int i = std::numeric_limits< int >::max() ;
     ++ i ;

which is undefined behavior; the implementation can do anything,
including reformat your hard disk, and is not required to
document what it does.

--
James Kanze (Gabi Software) email: james.kanze@gmail.com
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