https://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=110047
Bug ID: 110047 Summary: RFE: Add a warning for use of bare "unsigned" (possibly under -Wimplicit-int?) Product: gcc Version: 12.0 Status: UNCONFIRMED Keywords: diagnostic Severity: enhancement Priority: P3 Component: c Assignee: unassigned at gcc dot gnu.org Reporter: egallager at gcc dot gnu.org Blocks: 87403 Target Milestone: --- When I was first learning C, one thing that confused me was how you can just use plain "unsigned" as a type, without specifying the length (long, short, int, etc.). Thus, I thought that casting to unsigned would just change the sign like a call to abs(), without realizing that there was an implicit "int" involved. I made a testcase: $ cat bare_unsigned.c #include <limits.h> unsigned var; /* debatable */ unsigned long foo(void) { long variable = LONG_MAX; unsigned long uvariable = (unsigned)variable; /* warn here */ return uvariable; } $ The one where I added the "debatable" comment is debatable because I actually see a lot of declarations in that form pretty often, and it's probably not very harmful in that case, but the case with the cast, where it says "warn here", is probably more deserving of a warning, as there's a change of size involved. It might make sense to include this under -Wimplicit-int, or maybe create a new warning -Wbare-unsigned for it? Referenced Bugs: https://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=87403 [Bug 87403] [Meta-bug] Issues that suggest a new warning