Re: [Caml-list] ocaml, int32/64, bigarray and unsigned values ...

[Eric Cooper <ecc@cmu.edu>]

On Mon, Apr 11, 2005 at 05:35:51PM +0200, Sven Luther wrote:
> Now, what about conversion to Int32 or Int64 ? Would an unsigned
> Int32 which is represented as a negative signed Int32 not get broken
> when used to calculate Int64 values ?

You'll have to watch out for sign-extension: when a signed integer is
widened, the leading bits get filled with 1s to preserve the sign.
That's the wrong behavior if you want to widen an unsigned integer.
The Int{32,64} modules don't seem to have of_unsigned_int functions,
but you can simulate them by checking if the result is negative and
adjusting it (by adding 2^n).

> And what about comparisons ?

Right, you'll have to define your own, because for example -1 < 0,
but you want 0 < 0xFF...FF.  You can just test for negative numbers to
simulate it yourself (since any negative int is greater than any
positive int when treating them as unsigned, otherwise the native int
comparison works).

> Obviously max_int + 1 > max_int will be wrong since max_int + 1
> would be considered a negative number (-0 maybe ?).

Well, max_int + 1 = min_int, but that's what you want when that bit pattern is
interpreted as unsigned.  The only incorrect results will come from
overflow, which silently "wraps around" just like in C.

-- 
Eric Cooper             e c c @ c m u . e d u