Re: Some 64bit issues.

[Dirk Herrmann]

On Mon, 17 Sep 2001, Rob Browning wrote:

> Also, instead of fixing every call, I changed SCM_MAKE_CHAR to coerce
> it's arg, x, to an intptr_t.  This fixes all the warnings and some
> bugs, but is it more appropriate to add a coercion at the point of
> use?  i.e. I'm wondering if this global coercion, in the macro, might
> mask other errors.  I haven't thought about this at all yet, so the
> answer may be obvious...

To me it seems OK to do it in SCM_MAKE_CHAR.  To do it at the point of use
is not a good idea, IMO, since I would see it as an implementation detail
which type is used internally for guile's chars.  We should, however,
guarantee that SCM_MAKE_CHAR works for char and int parameters.

> There are also a number of places in the code where the string
> handling does things like 
> 
>   int k = SCM_STRING_LENGTH(foo);
> 
> Is this OK?  What happens if someone with 8GB of RAM wants to create a
> giant string?  I guess the real question is, what code guidelines do
> we want for the types that should be used for things like string
> indexes, etc., on the C side.

The code line that you give as an example is not OK.  I think (better:  
hope to remember correctly) that we decided to use size_t for the lengths
of strings.

Best regards,
Dirk Herrmann