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From: Tim Rentsch <tr.17687@z991.linuxsc.com>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: Safety of casting from 'long' to 'int'
Date: Wed, 13 May 2026 11:37:05 -0700
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cross@spitfire.i.gajendra.net (Dan Cross) writes:

> In article <864ikdp9lk.fsf@linuxsc.com>,
> Tim Rentsch  <tr.17687@z991.linuxsc.com> wrote:
>
>> cross@spitfire.i.gajendra.net (Dan Cross) writes:
>>
>>> In article <868q9ppg4o.fsf@linuxsc.com>,
>>> Tim Rentsch  <tr.17687@z991.linuxsc.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> antispam@fricas.org (Waldek Hebisch) writes:
>>>>
>>>> [discussing the notion of "safe" programs]
>>>>
>>>>> As I wrote, safety is about ability to avoid or detect errors.
>>>>
>>>> In the functional programming community the usual statement is
>>>> "Well-typed programs cannot go wrong."
>>>
>>> This is only concerning _type safety_.
>>
>> I didn't mean to imply anything different.
>
> Looking at what you wrote:
>
> |I think a good way of understanding this is that, if
> |a program stays inside the safe limits of the language,
> |the program can produce wrong answers, but it cannot
> |produce meaningless answers.
>
> You are wrong.
>
> A well-typed program _can_ produce meaningless answers;  those
> answers will have a well-defined type, but it is impossible to
> say whether the value produced has any meaning with respect to
> the program's intended purpose.  Moreover, the "safe limits of
> the lanugage", whatever those may be, have nothing to do with
> it.

What you mean by meaningless isn't what I meant by meaningless.