Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!dino!ux1.cso.uiuc.edu!brutus.cs.uiuc.edu!psuvax1!psuvm!dn5
From: DN5@psuvm.psu.edu
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.programmer
Subject: Re: THINK C bug
Message-ID: <90039.091314DN5@PSUVM.BITNET>
Date: 8 Feb 90 14:13:14 GMT
References: <6661@ucdavis.ucdavis.edu> <19195@dartvax.Dartmouth.EDU>
Organization: Penn State University
Lines: 23

>In article <6661@ucdavis.ucdavis.edu> lim@iris.ucdavis.edu (Lloyd Lim) writes:
>>I'm using THINK C 4.0 and it won't accept the constant -2147483648 but it
>>does accept -2147483647 and 2147483647.  This value does fit in a long.
>>Curiously, it does accept 0x80000000 and -2147483647 - 1.
>>
>>Isn't this a bug or am I going to be called bunky?

Actually, this has a simple explanation (its still a bug, but an
understandable one :-) ).

Most numerical input routines I've seen flag any initial symbols that
they see (mostly "-"), and then convert the number.  +2147483648 is
too big to fit into a signed long.  The error gets checked after the
number is read in, and before the negative sign is used.  It would
be nice if the numerical input routine would special case this
number (and it wouldn't be too difficult).

Had the number not been too big, the negative sign would then be applied
to the number.


                         D. Jay Newman
                         dn5@psuvm.psu.edu