Allow using -1 and compare operators with bitwise types This series is an experiment for allowing constants like -1 or ~0 with bitwise types, as well as using compares on them. the motivation for allowing this is to avoid useless casts and warnings on using some generic macros on bitwise types. The case of interest here is: #define is_signed_type(T) (((T)(-1)) < (T)1) for which Sparse reports four warnings when 'T' is a bitwise type. Two of these warnings can be suppressed by using '__force' in the casts. But the other two can't be worked around because explicitly reject using any constants other than 0 with bitwise type. The changes in the series allow to use the following testcase without any warnings: #define __bitwise __attribute__((bitwise)) typedef signed int __bitwise s; typedef unsigned int __bitwise u; #define is_signed_type(type) (((type)-1) <= 0) int fs(void) { return ((s)-1) <= 0; } int fu(void) { return ((u)-1) <= 0; } and result in a modest but significant decrease in the number of warnings issued by sparse (x86 {def,all}config): - 2736 2735 cast to restricted type + 774 792 cast truncates bits from constant value - 3183 3152 incorrect type in assignment (different base types) - 162 159 incorrect type in initializer (different base types) - 789 661 restricted type degrades to integer - 13002 12857 Total @Linus, This seems to work correctly and I think it correspond to what you wished (maybe modulo this 'early constant expansion' I added) and I think that accepting the -1/all-ones is fine. OTOH, I don't think we can allow the compares because they don't make any sense for the 'endian' types. Surely we want to catch things like: typedef unsigned int __bitwise __be32; __be32 x, y; ... ... (x < y) @Bart, Is there a good reason why the macro compares against 1 and not against 0? Is it just because of -Wtype-limits? If so, is it possible to use '<= 0' like here above? The series is available for review and testing at: https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/devel/sparse/sparse.git bitwise-ones Luc Van Oostenryck (5): bitwise: add testcases bitwise: accept all ones as non-restricted value bitwise: allow compares for bitwise types bitwise: do not remove the signedness of bitwise types bitwise: early expansion of simple constants evaluate.c | 52 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++- parse.c | 1 - show-parse.c | 2 +- validation/bitwise-cast.c | 26 ++++++++++++++++ validation/bitwise-cmp.c | 31 +++++++++++++++++++ validation/bitwise-is-signed.c | 21 +++++++++++++ validation/linear/bitwise-cmps.c | 17 +++++++++++ validation/linear/bitwise-cmpu.c | 17 +++++++++++ 8 files changed, 164 insertions(+), 3 deletions(-) create mode 100644 validation/bitwise-cmp.c create mode 100644 validation/bitwise-is-signed.c create mode 100644 validation/linear/bitwise-cmps.c create mode 100644 validation/linear/bitwise-cmpu.c -- 2.36.1