bin/54672: [PATCH] fix gcc 3.3 compiler warning for ifconfig(8)

[Bruce Evans]

The following reply was made to PR bin/54672; it has been noted by GNATS.

From: Bruce Evans <bde at zeta.org.au>
To: Lukas Ertl <l.ertl at univie.ac.at>
Cc: FreeBSD-gnats-submit at freebsd.org, freebsd-bugs at freebsd.org
Subject: Re: bin/54672: [PATCH] fix gcc 3.3 compiler warning for ifconfig(8)
Date: Mon, 21 Jul 2003 16:28:02 +1000 (EST)

 On Sun, 20 Jul 2003, Lukas Ertl wrote:
 
 > >Description:
 >
 > When compiling ifconfig(8), gcc-3.3 emits the following warning:
 >
 > cc -O -pipe -march=athlon -DUSE_IF_MEDIA -DINET6 -DUSE_VLANS -DUSE_IEEE80211 -DUSE_MAC -DNS -Wall -Wmissing-prototypes -Wcast-qual -Wwrite-strings  -Wnested-externs -I..   -DRESCUE  -c /usr/src/sbin/ifconfig/ifconfig.c
 > /usr/src/sbin/ifconfig/ifconfig.c: In function `setatrange':
 > /usr/src/sbin/ifconfig/ifconfig.c:1692: warning: comparison is always false due to limited range of data type
 > /usr/src/sbin/ifconfig/ifconfig.c:1692: warning: comparison is always false due to limited range of data type
 >
 > The bogus comparison is:
 >
 >     if (sscanf(range, "%hu-%hu", &first, &last) != 2
 >         || first == 0 || first > 0xffff
 >         || last == 0 || last > 0xffff || first > last)
 >
 > first and last are both declared as u_short, which can't hold values larger
 > then 0xffff, so the comparison isn't needed.
 
 This is machine-dependent.  u_short can hold values up to USHRT_MAX, which
 is >= 0xffff (perhaps strictly larger).
 
 There doesn't seem to be any good reason to use u_shorts; similar code in
 at_getaddr() uses u_ints so it accidentally avoids the warning except on
 machines with 16-bit u_ints.
 
 Using strtoul() as mentioned in the XXX before the above code would avoid
 the warning less accidentally since 0xffff < ULONG_MAX on all machines.
 
 Bruce