Re: Suggested method for returning a string from a C program?

On 20/03/2025 19:10, Keith Thompson wrote:

bart <bc@freeuk.com> writes:
[...]

This is why it popular to just do:
>
   typedef long long int i64;
>
and to use %lld to print, and -LL on literals to force a 64-bit type.

 Is it?  I don't recall seeing anyone other than you do that.

stdint.h et al are just ungainly bolt-ons, not fully supported by the
language.

 No, they're fully supported by the language.  They've been in the ISO
standard since 1999.

I don't think so. They are add-ons that could have been created in user-code even prior to C99 (user-defined typedefs for 64 bits would 'need long long').
All that's happened is that 'stdint.h' has been blessed.
You wouldn't, in user-code, be able to invent new literal suffixes like -LL but for those new types.
And you wouldn't be able to get the *printf functions of your standard library to accept new format codes corresponding to those stdint types.
And in fact you can do neither of those things now; ergo they're not fully supported in the same way that 'char short int long' are.

The problem with 'long' manifests itself there too, since on Linux,
'int64_t' appears to be commonly defined on top of 'long' for 32-bit
systems, and 'long long' for 64-bit ones.

 If you're writing code for which that's a problem, you probably need to
fix your code.
 

So somebody eschewing those ugly macros and using "%ld" to print an
'int64_t' type, will find it doesn't work when run on a 64-bit system,
where "%lld" is needed. Same problem with using '1L' to define an
int64_t literal.

 Somebody writing blatantly non-portable code will run into problems when
they try to port it.
 I understand that you dislike <stdint.h>.  That's both perfectly
acceptable and not very interesting.

I dislike it because this stuff it is not hard to do in a language with full support, but C always seems to make a dog's dinner of it:
               C                    Other (example)
Declare       uint64_t x;          u64 x
Literal       UINT64_C(123);       123
Print         printf(PRI64d, x);   print x
(Alt?)        printf("I64d", x);
Max of type   UINT64_MAX           u64.max
Max of expr   (1)                  x.max
Read          scanf(SCNd64...)     read x
Requires:     stdio.h                          (for printf/scanf)
               stdint.h                         (for uint64_t/UINT64_C)
               inttypes.h                       (for PRI64d/SCNd64)
((1) I believe not possible without using 'typeof' and _Generic to emulate)