This would only be an issue in following cases:
a) A class has more than 255 backward compatible versions. b) An archive has more than 64K different classes in it.
It is currently inconcievable to me that such a program would ever be written. Setting the sizes of these types to larger values would make every single binary archive bigger and slower.
The only think I might suggest is that one add an assertion so that if either of the above were to occur, the program would trap - at least in debug mode. So maybe one might use
assert(t.t < max_value<unsigned char>
const unsigned char x = static_cast<unsigned char>(t.t);
assert(t.t < max_value<int_least16_t >
const int_least16_t x = static_cast<int_least16_t>(t.t);
Robert Ramey
You could always do some kind of escaped encoding. For example, reserve a value of 255 to mean >=255, and follow that byte with the actual value using a larger represention (may as well go right to a native int). Cheers, Chris