[Quotes from multiple people]

: > In that case, I think that
: > 	(int)val >= 0
: > does the right thing in every useful case:

: However, the original goal was to come up with an expression which
: yields the correct result _and_ which avoids the gcc "comparison is
: always 1 due to limited range of data type" warning.

Better: fix gcc or to be able to disable a few -W options.  Then go and
remove all similar workarounds from the entire code tree. 

Short-circuit math is allowed to cause warnings like this in some cases (as
a portability issue), but it should not be worked around when the
short-circuit is intended.  That causes slower code at the expense of a
so-called "clean compile."

: > ((int)val >= 0) yields the correct result, but also causes that
: > warning.
: 
: No, it fails in implementations that have sizeof(char) == sizeof(int).

Which is *not* an impossibility, y'know.

: > a-HA.  Granted, a compiler is entitled to emit as many spurious messages
: > as it likes, but this seems too clever by half...
: 
: That's why I really don't like the religious requirement of -Wall in our
: compilation.

You mean "-Wall -Werror"?...  As I said, fix gcc, don't borf your code
because GCC is being dain bramaged. 

-- 
-- Todd Vierling (Personal tv@pobox.com; Bus. todd_vierling@xn.xerox.com)