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Date: Thu, 12 Dec 2002 11:44:14 -0500
From: Hyman Rosen <hyrosen@mail.com>
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Subject: Re: IBM Acquires Rational Ada
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Date: 2002-12-12T11:44:14-05:00
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Robert A Duff wrote:
> Heh?  In what problem domain is it beneficial to have *implicit* type
> conversions that lose information?

It's not particularly beneficial, and if the language was
being designed today, those implicit conversions would most
likely not be included. But C had them, now a very long time
ago, and C++ had to follow suit because C compatibility was
an important goal.

I'm sure the original argument was for conciseness of
expression, something along these lines -

     void utoa(unsigned u, char *a)
     {
         char buf[30], *p = buf;
         do *p++ = u % 10 + '0'; while (u /= 10);
         do *a++ = *--p; while (p > buf);
         *a = 0;
     }

There are various expressions mixing integers and
characters, and assignments of integers to characters.