Re: [HACKERS] Size vs size_t - Mailing list pgsql-hackers

From Tom Lane
Subject Re: [HACKERS] Size vs size_t
Date
Msg-id 25076.1489699457@sss.pgh.pa.us
Whole thread Raw
In response to Re: [HACKERS] Size vs size_t  (Robert Haas <robertmhaas@gmail.com>)
Responses Re: [HACKERS] Size vs size_t  (Andres Freund <andres@anarazel.de>)
List pgsql-hackers
Robert Haas <robertmhaas@gmail.com> writes:
> On Thu, Mar 16, 2017 at 5:01 PM, Andres Freund <andres@anarazel.de> wrote:
>> On 2017-03-16 16:59:29 -0400, Robert Haas wrote:
>>> I guess I assumed that we wouldn't have defined PG-specific types if
>>> we wanted to just use the OS-supplied ones.

>> I think, in this case, defining Size in the first place was a bad call
>> on behalf of the project.

The short answer to that is that "Size" predates the universal acceptance
of size_t.  If we were making these decisions today, or anytime since the
early 2000s, we'd surely have just gone with size_t.  But it wasn't a
realistic option in the 90s.

> Well, I don't think we want to end up with a mix of Size and size_t in
> related code.  That buys nobody anything.  I'm fine with replacing
> Size with size_t if they are always equivalent, but there's no sense
> in having a jumble of styles.

I'm not in a hurry to do "s/Size/size_t/g" because I'm afraid it'll create
a lot of merge pain for back-patching, while not actually buying anything
much concretely.  I think this falls under the same policy we use for many
other stylistic details, ie make new code look like the code right around
it.  But I'm fine with entirely-new files standardizing on size_t.
        regards, tom lane



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