[Insight-developers] Why is m_NumberOfThreads signed?

[Williams, Norman K]

Causing a new warning doesn't break backwards compatibility.

Countable things, like apples, oranges, and CPU threads are by definition
non-negative.  You can't have negative apples in a basket, and you can't
have less than zero threads. Unless you find a way to use negative threads
to un-execute code for you.

Using an unsigned int for m_NumberOfThreads is conceptually transparent.

The advantage of things that are conceptually transparent is that if a
user bumps into one, they don't have to think very hard about why they
just bumped into it, and the course of action to walk around it is
unambiguous.

In other words, if the change throws a few warnings, most users will
either ignore them, or they'll look at the code and see how to make the
warning go away. If they originally wrote the code, there's a good chance
they'll remember how they had to make their loop counter signed when it
made no sense, and will welcome the end of one small annoyance in ITK.



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