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Date: Sat, 17 Jan 2015 06:56:52 +0100
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To: Andrea Faulds <ajf@ajf.me>
Cc: Marc Bennewitz <php@marc-bennewitz.de>, PHP internals <internals@lists.php.net>
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Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] unsinged integer
From: pierre.php@gmail.com (Pierre Joye)

On Sat, Jan 17, 2015 at 4:32 AM, Andrea Faulds <ajf@ajf.me> wrote:
> Hi Marc,
>
> This is an unusual follow-up from me.
>
> Particularly on 32-bit systems, it would be useful to have a =E2=80=98u=
=E2=80=99 zend_parse_parameters specifier for an unsigned integer. Unfortun=
ately, again, I don=E2=80=99t think native unsigned integers (IS_ULONG) wil=
l get into PHP. But it looks like the bigint RFC probably will, and here=E2=
=80=99s the opportunity.
>
> With the bigint RFC, we could add a =E2=80=98u=E2=80=99 specifier. You=E2=
=80=99d get a native ulong (zpp would convert from long or bigint), and cou=
ld easily produce a long/bigint from your ulong if you need to return one (=
add RETURN_ULONG which implicitly converts?).
>
> Now, it=E2=80=99s not as fast as a native IS_ULONG type would be, but we =
could still do things like properly support file sizes in the 2GB-4GB range=
 on 32-bit, at least. :)
>
> What do you think?

It looks to me like yet another can of worms (how do you deal with
conversions, mixed operations, etc. it adds a lot of special cases)
with little benefits. 32bit environments are dying species. There are
ways to support LFS without that as well (while I doubt the effort is
worth it). So if I'd to choose whether PHP should support unsigned
integer, my gut feeling right now is no, it should not.

Cheers,
--=20
Pierre

@pierrejoye | http://www.libgd.org