Re: [PATCH] inttypes.h: imaxabs(3): Implement as a macro

[Joseph Myers <joseph@codesourcery.com>]

On Wed, 14 Sep 2022, Alejandro Colomar via Libc-alpha wrote:

> > intmax_t was discussed at length in WG14, and while there was agreement on
> > reducing its uses (hence the change to floating-point return types for
> > fromfp functions, for example, see bug 28327), there was not agreement on
> > any particular form of obsolescence.  And it *is* useful in practice for
> > printing types such as off_t or mode_t with no corresponding printf
> > formats; those could just do with appropriate constraints to be no wider
> > than intmax_t when a future POSIX revision is based on C2x.
> 
> Yes, and yet the same can be said about long long.  intmax_t is one less
> character (both in the type name, and in "j"), but apart from that, no much
> benefit.

It provides a clearer statement of intent to readers of the code than long 
long does.

As I noted in the WG14 discussions of a few proposed obsoletions, just 
because some language feature is not useful for *all* the things some 
people might like to be able to use it for isn't a reason for obsoletion 
when it's still useful for *some* of those things.

-- 
Joseph S. Myers
joseph@codesourcery.com