RFR: 8261669: Add lint warning for widening primitive conversions that lose information

Archie Cobbs acobbs at openjdk.org
Thu Feb 20 21:05:22 UTC 2025


This PR is a prototype to stimulate discussion of [JDK-8261669](https://bugs.openjdk.org/browse/JDK-8261669), which seeks to add more warnings when an implicit cast of a primitive value might lose information. This can possibly happen when converting an `int` to `float`, or when converting a `long` to `float` or `double`. Java does not require an explicit cast for such assignments, even though they may result in information loss.

I'm interested in feedback both on whether this is a good idea and also the approach taken - thanks!

Currently, we generate this warning, but only for assignment operators, e.g.:

int x = 0;
x += 1.0f;   // warning here


This PR would add warnings for two additional cases, (a) regular assignments and (b) method parameters, e.g.:

void method(float f) { }
...
float a = 0x10000001;   // warning here
method(0x10000001);     // warning here


It would _not_ generate a warning in cases (a) and (b) when the value is a constant value and we can determine that no information would be lost, e.g.:

float f1 = 0x10000000;     // no warning here

The definition of "no information would be lost" is that a round trip results in the same value, e.g., `(int)(float)x == x`. In the examples above, `0x10000000` survives the round trip but `0x10000001` does not.

As usual, warnings can be suppressed via `@SuppressWarnings` or by adding an explicit cast:


float a = (float)0x10000001;   // no warning here

-------------

Commit messages:
 - Warn for more widening primitive conversions that lose information.

Changes: https://git.openjdk.org/jdk/pull/23718/files
  Webrev: https://webrevs.openjdk.org/?repo=jdk&pr=23718&range=00
  Issue: https://bugs.openjdk.org/browse/JDK-8261669
  Stats: 187 lines in 15 files changed: 149 ins; 0 del; 38 mod
  Patch: https://git.openjdk.org/jdk/pull/23718.diff
  Fetch: git fetch https://git.openjdk.org/jdk.git pull/23718/head:pull/23718

PR: https://git.openjdk.org/jdk/pull/23718


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