Re: New function xpalloc in module xalloc

[Paul Eggert]

On 4/3/21 11:17 PM, Marc Nieper-Wißkirchen wrote:
> Does the comparison make any sense, by the way?

Yes, although it's needed only on unusual (and these days perhaps 
theoretical?) platforms where SIZE_MAX < PTRDIFF_MAX.

I hadn't noticed the issue, as the projects I contribute to (coreutils, 
etc.) compile with -Wno-sign-compare because gcc -Wsign-compare has too 
many false alarms.

I prefer to avoid casts merely to pacify GCC (as casts are too 
error-prone), so I installed the attached. I hope it works for you. (If 
not, perhaps you can use -Wno-sign-compare too....)

This underscores the fact that the xalloc module should use idx_t 
instead of size_t pretty much everywhere. If xrealloc's size arg were of 
idx_t we wouldn't need any of this hacking. I realize that replacing 
size_t with idx_t is an incompatible change to xalloc's API, but it's 
time callers started using signed instead of unsigned byte counts as 
that helps avoid and/or catch integer-overflow errors better. I'll add 
that to my list of things to do for Gnulib.

0001-xalloc-try-to-pacify-gcc-Wsign-compare.patch
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