PROPOSAL: Unsigned Integer Widening Operator (original) (raw)

Bruce Chapman brucechapman at paradise.net.nz
Thu Mar 26 02:23:07 PDT 2009

Comments inline.

regards

Bruce

Reinier Zwitserloot wrote:

Noel, Bruce:

Perhaps Noel has a point, here. imagine: public class ByteUtils { public int b2i(byte b) { return b & 0xFF; } }

I wouldn't advise this, b2i is the JVM bytecode to convert a byte to an integer with sign extension, so to use it for a method that does zero extension would be a little confusing. :)

import static ByteUtils.b2i;

results = (result << 8) | b2i(contents[i]); vs: results = (result << 8) | (+)contents[i];

The second bit is hardly better, and it suffers from cast ambiguity if you add more fluff to the expression. Once you also add parens to localize the cast like so: results = (result << 8) | ((+)contents[i]);

the (+) only applies to a byte or short, and the only way to have one of those is a variable or array access (with optional prefix or postfix increment or decrement) or explicitly downcasting, so in practice I don't think there would EVER be a situation where you would need (or even want) to wrap the (+) expression in parenthesis.

The static import starts to win, in my book, and that's before considering the impact of a language change.

did you not read Bruce's introduction to his three proposals? It provides some useful background information. If you've ever worked with bytes in java, you may remember that the main issue is crippling wordiness. A librar --Reinier Zwitserloot Like it? Tip it! http://tipit.to On Mar 25, 2009, at 11:30, Noel Grandin wrote: I would think that a utility class that performed widening operations, and maybe some other useful stuff would be preferable to extending the language/ Perhaps a BinaryMath class to live alongside java.lang.Math? Regards, Noel. Bruce Chapman wrote:

Title Unsigned Integer Widening Operator

latest html version at http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dcvp3mkv2k39wt5gf&hl AUTHOR(S): Bruce Chapman OVERVIEW

SNIP

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