int/long unification hides bugs

[Josiah Carlson]

kartick_vaddadi at yahoo.com (kartik) wrote:

> integers are used in different ways from strings. i may expect file
> paths to be around 100 characters, and if i get a 500-character path,
> i have no problem just because of the length. but if a person's age is
> 500 where i expect it to be less than 100, then **definitely**
> something's wrong.

So *you* need to do bounds checking.  Last time I checked, Python didn't
raise an overflow error on getting to 500, so you're going to need to do
the check anyways.


> as i look at my code, i rarely have an issue with string sizes, but if
> an integer variable gets very large (say > 2**31 or 2**63), it
> generally reflects a bug in my code.

And you should check that, and not rely on a misfeature and a mistake. 
It is going in whether you like it or not, and has been planned since
Python 2.3.


> i suggest u base your comments on real code, rather than reasoning in
> an abstract manner from your ivory tower.

Ahh, real code.  Ok *rummages through some code*.  Yeah, so I checked,
and I don't rely on overflow errors.  I use explicit bounds checking in
all cases where values outside my expected range can come.  Then again,
I prefer to check my variables when I rely on them.


 - Josiah