• barsoap@lemm.ee
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    19 hours ago

    I mean i < 10 isn’t wrong as such, it’s just good practice to always use <= because in the INT_MAX case you have to and everything should be regular because principle of least astonishment: That 10 might become a #define FOO 10, that then might become #define FOO INT_MAX, each of those changes look valid in isolation but if there’s only a single i < FOO in your codebase you introduced a bug by spooky action at a distance. (overflow on int is undefined behaviour in C, in case anyone is wondering what the bug is).

    …never believe anyone who says “C is a simple language”. Their code is shoddy and full of bugs and they should be forced to write Rust for their own good.

    • kevincox@lemmy.ml
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      15 hours ago

      But your case is wrong anyways because i <= INT_MAX will always be true, by definition. By your argument < is actually better because it is consistent from < 0 to iterate 0 times to < INT_MAX to iterate the maximum number of times. INT_MAX + 1 is the problem, not < which is the standard to write for loops and the standard for a reason.

      • barsoap@lemm.ee
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        17 hours ago

        You’re right, that’s what I get for not having written a line of C in what 15 years. Bonus challenge: write for i in i32::MIN..=i32::MAX in C, that is, iterate over the whole range, start and end inclusive.

        (I guess the ..= might be where my confusion came from because Rust’s .. is end-exclusive and thus like <, but also not what you want because i32::MAX + 1 panics).

          • barsoap@lemm.ee
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            15 hours ago

            Would you be bold enough to write if (i++ == INT_MAX) break? The result of the increment is never used, but an increment is being done, at least syntactically, and it overflows, at least theoretically, so maybe (I’m not 100% sure) the compiler could be allowed to break out into song because undefined behaviour allows anything to happen.