Getting rid of Microsoft specific types
Created by: ghost
Defines and typedefs such as BOOL
, CONST
, UINT
and DWORD
are used pretty much everywhere in the codebase.
Most of these defines where introduced a long time ago (BOOL
was added before bool
was thrown into C++) and now, most of them are meaningless.
Nowadays, every decent compiler should support C++'s fundamental types without any problem.
Of course, DirectX types and some other funky types (HWND
, HHOOK
and so on) can't be replaced but there's no excuse for more common types I've pointed out earlier.
Pros
- Less error-prone (every Microsoft specific type names are upper case)
- Makes high-level parts of the engine less dependent on MSVC / Windows API
- Improves compile/runtime speed and makes debugging tasks easier (
BOOL
is aint
typedef whereasbool
is a true type) - Syntax highlighting / code readability is slightly improved; GitHub syntax highlighter (and probably many others) don't know about
BOOL
,HANDLE
orDWORD
but it does its job perfectly well on the standard types.
Cons
- Nothing. Really, I can't think of any drawbacks.
What to do?
There's nothing hard. We just need to search for these types and replace them by their standard equivalent. If you _really_ have to use a non-standard type in a piece of code, it should be better to keep this code 'away (i.e. not in a header nor in the middle of a high-level source file) To make things easier, here's a table with what should be considered for replacement and their equivalents.
Microsoft types | Standard equivalents | stdint types |
---|---|---|
INT8 |
signed char |
int8_t |
PINT8 |
signed char * |
int8_t * |
BYTE / UCHAR / UINT8
|
unsigned char |
uint8_t |
LPBYTE / PBYTE
|
unsigned char * |
uint8_t * |
INT16 / SHORT
|
signed short |
int16_t |
PINT16 / PSHORT
|
signed short * |
int16_t * |
USHORT / WORD / UINT16
|
unsigned short |
uint16_t |
LPWORD / PWORD
|
unsigned short * |
uint16_t * |
INT / INT32 / LONG / LONG32
|
signed int |
int32_t |
LPINT / PINT / LPLONG / PLONG / PINT32 /PLONG32 / PLONG
|
signed int * |
int32_t * |
DWORD / DWORD32 / UINT / UINT32 / ULONG32 / ULONG
|
unsigned int |
uint32_t |
LPDWORD / PDWORD / PDWORD32
|
unsigned int * |
uint32_t * |
INT64 / LONGLONG / LONG64
|
signed long long |
int64_t |
PINT64 / PLONG64 / PLONGLONG
|
signed long long * |
int64_t * |
DWORDLONG / DWORD64 / QWORD / UINT64 / ULONGLONG / ULONG64
|
unsigned long long |
uint64_t |
INT_PTR / LONG_PTR
|
N/A1 | intptr_t |
DWORD_PTR / UINT_PTR
|
N/A1 | uintptr_t |
BOOL / BOOLEAN
|
bool |
N/A |
LPBOOL / PBOOL / PBOOLEAN
|
bool * |
N/A |
CCHAR / CHAR
|
char |
N/A |
LPSTR / PCHAR
|
char * |
N/A |
LPCSTR / PCSTR
|
const char * |
N/A |
CONST |
const |
N/A |
FLOAT |
float |
N/A |
PFLOAT |
float * |
N/A |
VOID |
void |
N/A |
LPCVOID |
const void * |
N/A |
WCHAR |
wchar_t |
N/A |
LPWSTR / PWSTR / PWCHAR
|
wchar_t * |
N/A |
LPCWSTR / PCWSTR
|
const wchar_t * |
N/A |
1 - Representation of an integer type for pointer precision
- INT_PTR / LONG_PTR are mapped to a 32-bit signed integer on 32-bits systems and to a 64-bit signed integer on 64-bits systems.
- DWORD_PTR / UINT_PTR are mapped to a 32-bit unsigned integer on 32-bits systems and to a 64-bit unsigned integer on 64-bits systems.
It's clear that the easiest way to do that would be to use cstdint along with the standard types. Feel free to share anything, any ideas about all this.