Re: Bug: yyleng declared as type size_t

[W. L. Estes]

> Here's another possible bug.  yyleng in a non-reentrant scanner is defined in
> the skeleton as type 'size_t' instead of 'int'. I stumbled across it while
> building the "lclint" utility, which declares yyleng in a header file as an
> extern of type 'int'. This bug actually breaks the build, because gcc sees
> "conflicting types" in the two declarations.
> 
> Can you think of any reason why 'size_t' would be preferred over 'int' for
> yyleng?

yyleng is a length and hence will never be negative. ints can be
negative. as a special bonus (although this has nothing to do with any
bonus program offered by your local grocery store), you'll get that
extra bit as a possible bit in your non-negative range so lengths can
be twice as big using an unsigned type.

--Will