Re: FYI: fixed yycheck signed/unsigned comparison warnings

[Joel E. Denny]

On Sat, 12 Aug 2006, Paul Eggert wrote:

> The story is a bit complicated, but here it is.

Thanks for taking the time.  I don't know the history.

> Originally yacc was
> designed to use only int types.  Bison follows in this tradition,
> which means that on most modern hosts Bison-generated parsers silently
> mishandle grammars whose state numbers etc. don't fit in the 2 Gi
> range.

Should b4_int_type trigger an error when things are beyond the size 
expected?

> save space; the values are intended to be 'int' values.

Does this mean unsigned int should never be returned by b4_int_type?

This quick fix (triggering an error) seems innocuous to me.  Yes, I know, 
famous last words.  I'm not going to lose any sleep if we leave it as is.  
I'm just curious.

> > I fear we may lose legitimate warnings.
> 
> We may, but that's life.  There are too many false alarms with that
> particular warning.  I have some practical experience in this area.

I don't, and I don't believe I can build a strong case for keeping the 
warning, so I defer.

Thanks.

Joel