Re: Math.min and Math.max for byte / short
Mark Space wrote:
[...]
I think it's been mentioned here on this list that the JVM and the
language spec require bytes to be promoted to ints for any kind of
arithmetic or logical operation. The Java language merely implements
what is possible on current JVMs in this respec. There is no operation
for comparing bytes in JVMs,
Right.
so you might as well promote then cast it,
because that's what the JVM is going to do.
Unnh, what? The result of the comparison is not an int,
but a boolean, and you almost certainly don't want to cast the
boolean to something else. Rather, you want it to govern some
other part of the calculation, and it's what goes on in the
governed code that may (or may not) require casting.
byte b1 = 42;
byte b2 = -42;
byte minimum = (b1 < b2) ? b1 : b2;
No casts required, or desired.
Whether it's truly correct for Java to follow the JVM capabilities so
closely in this regard is another debate. [...]
Yeah. Sort of an empty debate in the context of Java,
because Java is surely not going to change in that respect.
Something for the designers of Mocha to think about, though.
--
Eric Sosman
esosman@ieee-dot-org.invalid