Why does an unsigned type for sizes or indices fare worse than a signed type? When do I want the -247th element in an array? When do I have a block that is -10 bytes in size?

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charlie90 11 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Because doing subtraction on sizes/indicies is common, and signed handles the case where you subtract below 0. Unsigned yields unintuitive results. i.e, unsigned fails silently. For example, looping to the 2nd to last item in an array or getting the index before the given index.

The source of confusion is that unsigned is a terrible name. Unsigned does not mean non-negative. Its 100% complete valid to assign a negative value to an unsigned, it just fails silently.

If you want non-negative integers, then you should make a wrapper class that enforces non-negativity at compile and runtime.

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throwaway894345 6 hours ago | parent [-]

> The source of confusion is that unsigned is a terrible name. Unsigned does not mean non-negative. Its 100% complete valid to assign a negative value to an unsigned, it just fails silently.

C’s implicit casts are tripping you up. Unsigned ints can’t be negative, but C will happily let you assign a negative signed int to an unsigned int variable, but the moment it is assigned it ceases to be negative. In serious programming languages this implicit assignment is forbidden—you have to explicitly cast.

> For example, looping to the 2nd to last item in an array or getting the index before the given index.

I don’t understand what you mean here, can you clarify?

> If you want non-negative integers, then you should make a wrapper class that enforces non-negativity at compile and runtime.

Unsigned integers are the compile time side of the coin, but yes you may want to take care to enforce it at runtime as well, though this typically implies a performance penalty that most don’t want to pay.

	▲	uecker 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		In C your compiler can help you with conversions and if not, please use a better one. In this regard, C is a very pragmatic language, and hence for actual work it is a more "serious" programming language than programming languages which are based on some idealistic theory that pedantic typing will fix all your problems, but actually keep you from doing your job.

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uecker 13 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

the reason is not that you want a negative index or size, but that you want the computation of the index to be correct, and you want to have obvious errors. Both turns out to be easier with signed types.

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kevin_thibedeau 13 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

There are (rare) times when you want negative array indices. C lets you index in both directions from a pointer to the middle of an array. That's why array indexing is signed in C. Some libc ctypes lookup tables do this. For sizing there is no strong case for negatives other than to shoehorn them into signed operations.

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throwaway894345 13 hours ago | parent [-]

That’s interesting but seems pretty dangerous. How do you know you aren’t going to decrement off the front of the array? Keeping the pointer to the first element in the array and using offsets seems safer for humans and I don’t think the computer would care.

	▲	mmilunic 12 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Kinda a smart alec response, but how do you know you aren’t going to increment off the end of the array when operating normally? I guess it is twice the danger.
	▲	8note 12 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		i dont want an unsigned int either though. how do you know your arbitrary sized number is inside the size of the array? best off having a bespoke type that understands how big the array its indexing is

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wavemode 12 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> When do I want the -247th element in an array?

You never want any element of an array, except elements within the range [0, array_length). Anything outside of that is undefined behavior.

I think people tend to overthink this. A function which takes an index argument, should simply return a result when the index is within the valid range, and error if it's outside of it (regardless of whether it's outside by being too low or too high). It doesn't particularly matter that the integer is signed.

If you aren't storing 2^64 elements in your array (which you probably aren't - most systems don't even support addressing that much memory) then the only thing unsigned gets you is a bunch of footguns (like those described in the OP article).