fix: uints are ok#20
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frrist
approved these changes
May 15, 2026
frrist
approved these changes
May 15, 2026
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Nowhere on the IPLD docs/specs is there any mention of uint being supported.
The only discussion I can find of this is here and here.
It is NOT supported in IPLD.
HOWEVER
CBOR does not support
uints either! It supports positive and negative ints. Thecbor-gentool just outputs the correct header depending on the type and value. i.e. forintit outputs either "unsigned int header" or "negative int header" and when it has auint, it only outputs "unsigned int header" (since it cannot be negative).So by using
uints, we're still outputting dag-cbor compliant encoding data.Where it gets interesting is when you deserialize. If you're trying to deserialize into a
uint, thencbor-genactually gives you more type safety since it'll try to read a "unsigned int header" and will fail if it sees a "negative int header", which saves us having to do a bunch of < 0 checks in code.i.e. we should just use
uintwhere it's appropriate and stop worrying.