From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1752424AbXBHSnx (ORCPT ); Thu, 8 Feb 2007 13:43:53 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1752434AbXBHSnx (ORCPT ); Thu, 8 Feb 2007 13:43:53 -0500 Received: from tmailer.gwdg.de ([134.76.10.23]:52446 "EHLO tmailer.gwdg.de" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1752424AbXBHSnw (ORCPT ); Thu, 8 Feb 2007 13:43:52 -0500 Date: Thu, 8 Feb 2007 19:42:07 +0100 (MET) From: Jan Engelhardt To: Linus Torvalds cc: Jeff Garzik , Linux Kernel Mailing List , Andrew Morton Subject: Re: somebody dropped a (warning) bomb In-Reply-To: Message-ID: References: <45CB3B28.60102@garzik.org> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII X-Spam-Report: Content analysis: 0.0 points, 6.0 required _SUMMARY_ Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org On Feb 8 2007 08:33, Linus Torvalds wrote: > >And the thing is, sometimes -Wpointer-sign-compare is just horribly >broken. For example, you cannot write a "strlen()" that doesn't >complain about "unsigned char *" vs "char *". And that is just a BUG. > >I'm continually amazed at how totally clueless some gcc warnings are. >You'd think that the people writing them are competent. And then >sometimes they show just how totally incompetent they are, by making it >impossible to use "unsigned char" arrays together with standard >functions. I generally have to agree with you about the unsigned char* vs char*. It is a problem of the C language that char can be signed and unsigned, and that people, as a result, have used it for storing "shorter_than_short_t"s. What C needs is a distinction between char and int8_t, rendering "char" an unsigned at all times basically and making "unsigned char" and "signed char" illegal types in turn. Jan -- ft: http://freshmeat.net/p/chaostables/