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Re:Maximal Min() and Max() by pyth0 on Thursday August 08, 2024 @01:03PM (#41193759)
Even with _Generic you can't declare generic functions. You'd still need a macro call that uses _Generic to dispatch different implementations depending on the parameter types.
Re:Maximal Min() and Max() by dwattttt on Thursday August 08, 2024 @05:32PM (#41196542)
Generic dispatching all the type combinations (or warning or erroring) wouldn't be a problem in a project the scale of the Linux kernel.

I'm unfamiliar with the incantations needed to try preserve constant expressions though, that might be too much for them.

Re:Maximal Min() and Max() by lifthrasiir on Thursday August 08, 2024 @09:33PM (#41198066)
The concrete problem that the kernel is facing is an exponential growth of macro expansion. Any current solution, safe or not in terms of re-evaluation, needs at least two copies of both arguments to be expanded [1], so expressions like `min(min(a, b), c)` will expand some arguments four times. The growth factor would be much larger than two if the definition wasn't carefully designed to avoid such cases.

[1] `_Generic` also requires at least two because you need one copy to select the generic implementation and another to call it. C23 `typeof` (or the equivalent GNU extension) allows for a compact type tuple matching:

    inline static int max_int(int x, int y) { return x > y ? x : y; }
    inline static unsigned max_uint(unsigned x, unsigned y) { return x > y ? x : y; }
    /* ... */

    #define MAX(a, b) (_Generic( \
        (void (*)(typeof(a), typeof(b))) NULL, \
        void (*)(int, int): max_int, \
        void (*)(unsigned, unsigned): max_uint, \
        /* ... */ \
        default: max_type_error \
    ) (a, b))