gcc4 compile fixes in bugzilla.gnome #162582

[John Ellson]

Derek Atkins wrote:

>John Ellson <ellson at research.att.com> writes:
>
>  
>
>>The majority of the casts were fixing the use of unsigned char
>>(xmlChar) for libxml2
>>routines versus signed char (char and gchar) in routines like strcmp.
>>
>>I think that restructuring the code to be more table driven could
>>help, but probably won't
>>completely eliminate the problem which originates from libxml2.
>>
>>Every cast in the patch fixed a warning message from gcc4.  I did not
>>attempt any more generalized changes.
>>    
>>
>
>Perhaps there's a gcc4-specific compiler option to turn off those
>warnings that are new-in-gcc4?
>  
>

Perhaps, but ignoring the warnings is no better than hiding them with 
casts, imho.

The same warning did catch another problem, the use of gint instead of 
guint.
 
In my opinion, the real problem is the multiple flavors of char 
(char/gchar/xmlChar)
for the same thing: a code for a character, where the codes are not 
intrinsically signed or unsigned;
they are just 8bit values use to differentiate one character from another.


John