Interest in support for saturated casts?

[Stephen Colebourne]

Joseph D. Darcy wrote:
> One of the libraries enhancements I'd like to implement in JDK 7 is 
> support for unsigned integer arithmetic, 4504839 "Java libraries 
> should provide support for unsigned integer arithmetic" and related 
> bugs.  That would include methods to do conversions like
>
> Short.toUnsignedInt(myShort)
> Short.toUnsignedLong(myShort)
>
> Perhaps there could also be methods for saturating conversions,
>
> Integer.toSaturatedShort(int)
> etc.
>
> The presence of such standard methods would make it easier for HotSpot 
> to intrinsify them on platforms with direct hardware support.
>
> -Joe 
In a similar vein, the libraries could do with methods like:

Numbers.safeAdd(int, int)
Numbers.safeSubtract(int, int)
Numbers.safeMultiply(int, int)
Numbers.safeCompare(int, int)

which throw ArithmeticException rather than silently overflowing like 
(int + int) and friends do. Weve had to develop these kinds of methods 
for JSR-310.

Stephen