On Aug 14, 2006, at 7:32 PM, Guido van Rossum wrote: > Methinks that as long as PyIntObject uses long (see intobject.h) > there's no point in changing this to long.
I guess you meant "changing this to Py_ssize_t ". I don't understand why the type used by PyIntObject is relevant here. Range object's "start" is logically an index, but int object's "ob_ival" is not. Since PyIntObject's is definition is exposed by Python.h, changing the type of ob_ival will probably break a lot of code. This reasoning does not apply to the range object. Since on most platforms ssize_t is the same as long, the choice between the two is just a matter of self-documenting code. Speaking of which, I find it unfortunate that the name Py_ssize_t was selected for the typedef. I would prefer Py_index_t. The first time I saw Py_ssize_t, I did not notice the double 's' and thought it was an unsigned type. On the second look, I've realized that it is signed and started wondering why not ptrdiff_t. I understand that ssize_t is defined by POSIX as the return type of functions such as "read" that can return either size or -1 for error. I don't think POSIX mandates sizeof(size_t) == sizeof(ssize_t), but I may be wrong. I would agree that ptrdiff_t, although standard C, is not a very intuitive name, but ssize_t is even less clear. _______________________________________________ Python-Dev mailing list Python-Dev@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-dev Unsubscribe: http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/python-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com
