FutureWarning/OverFlow error and 0xffff0000

[Richard Jones]

My code has a couple of instances of 0xffff0000 in it - they're bitmask flags 
to windows calls. Up until 2.3, all was well. Now in 2.3, I get warnings 
"FutureWarning: hex/oct constants > sys.maxint will return positive values in 
Python 2.4 and up" about that value. The first solution I came up with was to 
suppress the warning before I import the specific module that has the 
literal.

I fleetingly noticed someone suggest that I use a long int literal instead: 
0xffff0000L

No dice. On older versions of Python, this generates an "OverflowError: long 
int too large to convert to int".

Just thought I'd let people know that the long-int solution is not viable :(


    Richard