Roland Dreier wrote:
> Because the target variable is an (int).
If I were writing the code, I would leave the cast out. By assigning
the value to an int variable, you get the same effect anyway, so the
cast is redundant. And if you ever change the variable to a long, now
you have to remember to delete the cast too. So I don't see any
upside to having the cast.
But it's just a minor style issue...
Some compilers can warn about implicit narrowing conversions, such as
one gets without the cast here when sizeof(long)>sizeof(int), though
none I know of due so by default. Enabling such warnings can be a good
way to look for 32 to 64-bit porting assumptions. However, if one has
too many false alarms, such as from intval=strtol(), then the real
problems get lost in the noise. As far as I am concerned, avoiding such
warnings are the only motivation for including the cast here. This may
or may not be sufficient motivation to include it, depending on the
developer.
-Paul
P.S.
IIRC the '-Wcheck' option to the Intel compilers is one way to get
warnings about implicit narrowing conversions, plus many other "legal
but potentially non-portable" code idioms - well beyond the scope of the
gcc '-Wall' option.
--
Paul H. Hargrove phhargr...@lbl.gov
Future Technologies Group
HPC Research Department Tel: +1-510-495-2352
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Fax: +1-510-486-6900
