Re: Rethinking octave_idx_type

[John W. Eaton]

On 11/25/2016 11:35 PM, Rik wrote:

> Other than performance, I think it does make sense to become more
> compatible with the STL.  I don't think we have to switch to an unsigned
> type though.  2^63 = 9 x 10^18 elements and if each element is an IEEE
> double that would be 70 exabytes.  I don't know of any personal PCs that
> would need the extra bit of addressing from an unsigned type because
> they actually have 140 exabytes of memory.

Using size_t (which is unsigned) helps compatibility with the STL 
because that's what it uses for sizes and indexing.  But I agree it is 
not absolutely necessary.  We already get away with using a signed type 
and have dealt with most of the places where compilers warn about mixing 
signed and unsigned types.

jwe