You should look up the details of the types defined in the C99 header <stdint.h>. It conditionally defines types like int32_t (it won't be defined if the machine has no 32-bit type — fairly unlikely these days, but there are/were 36-bit machines in times past), and unconditionally defines types such as int_least32_t and int_fast32_t. The type int_least32_t is an alternative name for a type that is at least 32 bits wide; int_fast32_t is an alternative name for the fastest type that is at least 32 bits wide. These types must be supported in C99 because long must be at least 32 bits wide.

So, the names in use are carefully chosen from the C99 standard.

On Sun, Jul 21, 2013 at 4:20 AM, Alois Treindl <alois@astro.ch> wrote:

I noticed that a lot of source code changes were done in tzcode, for example many variables which were of type long have been changed
to int_fast32_t.

On my system, a x86_64 Linux, we get: typedef long int_fast32_t.
So as expected, it comes out the same. long is 64 bit.

But I wonder about the rationale behind the naming of this type: is it supposed to hold only 32-bit values? If it is supposed not to suffer from 32-bit overflow problems, i.e. meant to be wider than 32 bits, why is it named the way it is named?

A general question: there is very little documentation for the source code in general. Would it not be appropriate for the maintainers of the code to include more internal documentation?

Jonathan Leffler <jonathan.leffler@gmail.com> #include <disclaimer.h>
Guardian of DBD::Informix - v2013.0521 - http://dbi.perl.org
"Blessed are we who can laugh at ourselves, for we shall never cease to be amused."