Re: proposed patch for constant signed/unsigned comparison warning

[Paul Eggert <eggert at twinsun dot com>]

   Date: Wed, 24 Sep 1997 14:48:11 -0700
   From: Jim Wilson <wilson@cygnus.com>

	   I just compiled GNU diffutils 2.7 using -Wall with
	   testgcc-970912, and carefully analyzed the resulting
	   diagnostics....  with a 100% false-alarm ratio on a real
	   example, I think GCC needs to be improved.

   This code has been compiled by gcc many times before.  It may be
   the case that all of the warnings are false alarms because someone
   else has already fixed all of the cases where the warning was
   justified.

No, diffutils 2.7 was published in 1994, and -Wall didn't generate
these warnings until GCC test releases in 1996.  I chose diffutils 2.7
as an example partly because I know that it's so old that it couldn't
possibly have been affected by the current problem with `gcc -Wall'
and signed-vs-unsigned comparisons.

I realize that -W controlled those warnings in GCC 2.0 through
2.7.2.3, but I've been the primary diffutils maintainer since 2.0 was
released in 1992, and I don't compile diffutils with -W (I do use
-Wall).  I know that I haven't swept the diffutils code inserting
casts to work around the problem, and I would have known if anybody
else did.