types, not as we know them

Michal writes about his continuing pain with the Amiga LONG/ULONG types on 64-bit AROS. Some guidelines for types:

• If you’re writing new code, just use the normal C types, and if you need types of a specific width, look to C99 uint32_t, etc. On AROS, LONG is always 32 bits, even on 64 bit systems. The C type long, however, can be 32 or 64 bits. Don’t assume they mean the same thing.
• Don’t use ULONG, BYTE, IPTR, etc except when calling a system API that uses them, and then take care to make sure your type conversion is spot on.
• The possible exception to this is BOOL, but only ever assign TRUE or FALSE to it, and never explicitly test its value; that is use if (flag), not if (flag == TRUE).
• Don’t store pointers in non-pointer types. If you want a generic pointer, use void *. If you need to convert between an integral type and a pointer, use intptr_t/uintptr_t.
• Don’t do clever bit things with bit fields, like Michal describes for FHF_WRITE. Just say what you mean.

This community service announcement brought to you by the variables i, tmp and foo in the hopes that it helps the general health and wellbeing of people like Michal who have to decipher yours and my bad code by themselves years after it was written :)