On 14 Jan 2013, at 16:44, Martin wrote:
This is casting a "set of bits" (neither signed, nor unsigned - a
set is not a number at all) into a number. This only needs to have a
definition, if it should cast to signed or unsigned type.
It has to be signed, because otherwise any negative number in the
operation would trigger a range check error when it gets converted to
a (larger) unsigned type. The nature of the operation that is used
afterwards is irrelevant, range checking always operates in exactly
the same way when performing a type conversion from one type to
another. This is required to have predictable behaviour in a
programming language.
Jonas
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