http://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=40752
--- Comment #21 from David Stone <DeusExSophismata at gmail dot com> 2012-03-24 21:25:08 UTC --- Why was this patch rejected, and is there a way to improve it so that obviously safe cases (such as PR52703) are not warned about without having to specify a '-Wno-' option? Yes, according to the standard (C++03 5/9), calculations done on variables smaller than int are first promoted to int, then the calculation is done, then the value is converted back to the target size. However, C++03 1.8/3, the "as-if rule", states that it the program can't tell the difference, you can do whatever you want (see my answer to a similar question on Stack Overflow here: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5563000/implicit-type-conversion-rules-in-c-operators/8935697#8935697). The C++ standard does not require a diagnostic for this, and the apparent behavior is identical. Therefore, there can be no appeals to the C++ standard on the behavior of the warning. Because this is a purely option warning for which gcc defines the rules, we should define it to be useful. If gcc can prove that all of the values are greater than 0 (for instance, if all of the values are unsigned prior to implicit promotion or are positive integral constant expressions), then there is no possibility of having a negative value. Thanks to signed integer overflow being undefined, there is no risk of creating a negative value that way, either. Therefore, we should not warn. Having to manually say "Turn off stuff that no one could ever possibly want to see" seems like a sure way to make this warning useless.
