On 14/11/2013 17:22, Quoth Edward Diener:
Or my own preference of 'static_cast<long>(0xffffffff)'. But using '0xffffffffL' does not work. I admit that understanding the C++ Standard's different interprtetation of these two forms is beyond me.
0xffffffffL is an invalid literal value because it is out of range for the "long" type. (Using UL or even just U would make it valid, but still not the type you wanted.) 0xffffffff does not explicitly specify a size so the compiler is allowed to pick one itself; it will probably infer "unsigned int", as "signed int" is too small. (Or on platforms where "int" is 16-bit, it would infer "unsigned long".) An explicit cast on an integer is allowed to reinterpret unsigned to/from signed and/or extend or truncate bits, through long historic usage in C code. (Technically that usage should ideally require reinterpret_cast instead of static_cast, since you're reinterpreting the sign bit. But again I think tradition won out here -- and it's a less scary conversion than other places you need reinterpret_cast.)