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    CWG Issue 675</TITLE>
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<P><EM>This is an unofficial snapshot of the ISO/IEC JTC1 SC22 WG21
  Core Issues List revision 118b.
  See http://www.open-std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg21/ for the official
  list.</EM></P>
<P>2025-09-28</P>
<HR>
<A NAME="675"></A><H4>675.
  
Signedness of bit-field with typedef or template parameter type
</H4>
<B>Section: </B>11.4.10&#160; [<A href="https://wg21.link/class.bit">class.bit</A>]
 &#160;&#160;&#160;

 <B>Status: </B>CD3
 &#160;&#160;&#160;

 <B>Submitter: </B>Richard Corden
 &#160;&#160;&#160;

 <B>Date: </B>11 February, 2008<BR>


<P>[Moved to DR at the October, 2012 meeting.]</P>



<P>Is the signedness of <TT>x</TT> in the following example
implementation-defined?</P>

<PRE>
    template &lt;typename T&gt; struct A {
        T x : 7;
    };

    template struct A&lt;long&gt;;
</PRE>

<P>A similar example could be created with a typedef.</P>

<P>
<U>Lawrence Crowl</U>: According to 11.4.10 [<A href="https://wg21.link/class.bit#3">class.bit</A>] paragraph 3,
</P>

<BLOCKQUOTE>

It is implementation-defined whether a plain (neither explicitly
signed nor unsigned) <TT>char</TT>, <TT>short</TT>, <TT>int</TT>
or <TT>long</TT> bit-field is signed or unsigned.

</BLOCKQUOTE>

<P>This clause is conspicuously silent on typedefs and template
parameters.</P>

<P>
<U>Clark Nelson</U>: At least in C, the intention is that the
presence or absence of this redundant keyword is supposed to be
remembered through typedef declarations. I don't remember discussing
it in C++, but I would certainly hope that we don't want to do
something different. And presumably, we would want template type
parameters to work the same way.</P>

<P>So going back to the original example, in an instantiation of
<TT>A&lt;long&gt;</TT>, the signedness of the bit-field is
implementation-defined, but in an instantiation of <TT>A&lt;signed
long&gt;</TT>, the bit-field is definitely signed.</P>

<P>
<U>Peter Dimov</U>: How can this work?
Aren't <TT>A&lt;long&gt;</TT> and <TT>A&lt;signed long&gt;</TT> the
same type?</P>

(See also <A HREF="739.html">issue 739</A>.)

<P><B>Proposed resolution (February, 2012):</B></P>

This issue is resolved by the resolution of
<A HREF="739.html">issue 739</A>.

<BR><BR>
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