Re: preferring ptrdiff_t to size_t for object counts

[Bruno Haible]

Hi Paul,

I'd like to understand how much better this "ptrdiff_t world" is.

> This has the advantage that signed integer overflow can be detected 
> automatically on some platforms

You mean "-fsanitize=undefined", right?

Does this also catch the following situations?

  a) Pointer subtraction. ISO C11 § J.2 says:
     "The behavior is undefined in the following circumstances: ...
      The result of subtracting two pointers is not representable in an object
      of type ptrdiff_t (6.5.6)."

  b) When assigning a 'size_t' value > PTRDIFF_MAX to a 'ptrdiff_t' variable,
     is that undefined behaviour? Is that caught by "-fsanitize=undefined"?

Bruno