On 11/21/14, 11:29 AM, ketmar via Digitalmars-d wrote:
On Fri, 21 Nov 2014 19:31:23 +1100
Daniel Murphy via Digitalmars-d <[email protected]> wrote:

"bearophile"  wrote in message news:[email protected]...

 From my experience in coding in D they are far more unlikely than
sign-related bugs of array lengths.

Here's a simple program to calculate the relative size of two files, that
will not work correctly with unsigned lengths.

module sizediff

import std.file;
import std.stdio;

void main(string[] args)
{
     assert(args.length == 3, "Usage: sizediff file1 file2");
     auto l1 = args[1].read().length;
     auto l2 = args[2].read().length;
     writeln("Difference: ", l1 - l2);
}

The two ways this can fail (that I want to highlight) are:
1. If either file is too large to fit in a size_t the result will (probably)
be wrong
2. If file2 is bigger than file1 the result will be wrong

If length was signed, problem 2 would not exist, and problem 1 would be more
likely to occur.  I think it's clear that signed lengths would work for more
possible realistic inputs.
no, the problem 2 just becomes hidden. while the given code works most
of the time, it is still broken.

So how would you solve problem 2?

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