[fpc-devel] Warning: Conversion between ordinals and pointers is not portable

[Martin]

On 06/12/2012 12:06, Jonas Maebe wrote:
>
>
> That's because cardinal-cardinal results in an int64, because of a.o. 
> http://bugs.freepascal.org/view.php?id=8321
>
>>
>> So actually the message is just downgraded from Warning to Hint.
>
> Yes, that's by design. The compiler has no special knowledge about the 
> ptrint or ptruint types. It is almost impossible to fix all hints for 
> non-trivial programs, and they only exist to help find possibly 
> suspicious locations in code (and typecasting an integer into a 
> pointer is such an expression). You can always disable a particular 
> hint with -vqXXX if you are not interested in it.

I have no issue with the hint. I understand Ptr(u)Int are no different 
from all other int types. Just aliases.

I now see that I get the warning, if the type-to-be-casted is 64 bit and 
I am on a 32bit system.
program Project1;
{$mode objfpc}{$H+}
var
   p: Pointer;
   a: int64; //qword;
begin
   p := Pointer(a);
end.

project1.lpr(7,8) Warning: Conversion between ordinals and pointers is 
not portable

Yet what I do not understand, is why I get that message as warning (as 
opposed to a hint). If I understand it right (I have not tested, maybe 
it gives a warning on 64 bit target too, if so ignore the rest), and I 
compile for  a 64bit target, then it downgrades to a hint again?

The only difference is, that in the above example, if compiled for a 32 
bit system, I already may have broken code. But then what it actually 
means is that I should get warning about  a truncating the value.

   b := byte(a);
Gives no warning at all.

It also truncates the warning. What is then special about potentially 
truncating a value by using pointer(a)? If "pointer(a)" is worth a 
warning (instead of a hint, why isn't byte(a)?

---
Not saying it needs to change. But trying to figure out the reason behind.