Re: [IDEA+RFC] Possible solution for min()/max() war

[Peter T. Breuer]

"A month of sundays ago David Weinehall wrote:"
> On Thu, Aug 30, 2001 at 06:38:40PM +0200, Peter T. Breuer wrote:
> > "Linus Torvalds wrote:"
> > > What if the "int" happens to be negative?
> > 
> >    if sizeof(typeof(a)) != sizeof(typeof(b)) 
> >        BUG() // sizes differ
> >    const (typeof(a)) _a = ~(typeof(a))0   
> >    const (typeof(b)) _b = ~(typeof(b))0   
> >    if _a < 0 && _b > 0 || _a > 0 && b < 0
> >        BUG() // one signed, the other unsigned
> >    standard_max(a,b)
> 
> <disgusting vomit-sound>Do you really want code like that in the
> kernel (yes, I know that there are code that can compete with it in

Have you read it? Do you not realize That it optimizes down to BUG() or
the standard min/max? By BUG(), I was hoping that somebody could 
produce some magic that doesn't even compile when it reduces to that,
but maybe that's too much to hope for from gcc.

> ugliness</disgusting vomit-sound>

If that's the limit of the audiences intelligence, I don't think
I'll bother bothering to think next time! I rather hoped instead
for people to pick up the idea and tell me about the problem
left to cover (void* ? what if the arch does not have 2's complement
arithmetic?)

Peter