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Comment by xigoi

5 hours ago

Nim (the original one, not Nimony) compiles to C, so making basic types work differently from C would involve major performance costs.

Presumably unsigned want to return errors too?

Edit: I guess they could get rid of a few numbers... Anyhow it isn't a philosophy that is going to get me to consider nimony for anything.

> making basic types work differently from C would involve major performance costs.

Not if you compile with optimizations on. This C code:

  int wrapping_add_ints(int x, int y) {
      return (int)((unsigned)x + (unsigned)y);
  }

Compiles to this x86-64 assembly (with clang -O2):

  wrapping_add_ints:
          lea     eax, [rdi + rsi]
          ret

Which, for those who aren't familiar with x86 assembly, is just the normal instruction for adding two numbers with wrapping semantics.