Re: lib/34516: size_t should be equivalent to unsigned long

[David Holland <dholland%eecs.harvard.edu@localhost>]

The following reply was made to PR lib/34516; it has been noted by GNATS.

From: David Holland <dholland%eecs.harvard.edu@localhost>
To: gnats-bugs%netbsd.org@localhost
Cc: 
Subject: Re: lib/34516: size_t should be equivalent to unsigned long
Date: Sat, 19 Jan 2008 21:57:34 -0500

  > At least on i386, size_t is an alias for unsigned int. In practice,
  > unsigned long and size_t are essentially the same types on all
  > platforms I know of despite being treated as different types by
  > C compilers if defined as such.
  > [...]
 
 size_t is not, however, the *same* as unsigned long. Code that
 indiscriminately mixes size_t with unsigned long_t is no better than
 code that indiscriminately mixes size_t with unsigned int; it is not
 portable. It is not clear to me that there is any particular merit to
 associated with picking one way over the other. C does not support
 newtypes, so there is no way to avoid masking some such set of coding
 errors.
 
 Furthermore, the precise expansion of size_t is gcc's choice, because
 gcc "knows" the type signatures of various standard functions, so we
 can't or shouldn't change it in NetBSD even if there were a good
 argument in favor.
 
 -- 
    - David A. Holland / dholland%eecs.harvard.edu@localhost