Why is Count not an unsigned integer?

> Possible Duplicates:
> Why does .NET use int instead of uint in certain classes?
> Why is Array.Length an int, and not an uint

I've always wonder why .Count isn't an unsigned integer instead of a signed one?

For example, take ListView.SelectedItems.Count. The number of elements can't be less then 0, so why is it a signed int?

If I try to test if there are elements selected, I would like to test

 if (ListView.SelectedItems.Count == 0) {}

but because it's a signed integer, I have to test

 if (ListView.SelectedItems.Count <= 0) {}

or is there any case when .Count could be < 0 ?

Unsigned integer is not CLS-compliant (Common Language Specification)

For more info on CLS compliant code, see this link:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bhc3fa7f.aspx

Mabye because the uint data type is not part of the CLS (common language specification) as not all .Net languages support it.

Here is very similar thread about arrays:

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/6301/why-is-array-length-an-int-and-not-an-uint

Let’s look at this from a practical angle.

For better or worse, signed ints are the normal sort of ints in use in .NET. It was also normal to use signed ints in C and C++. So, most variables are declared to be int rather than unsigned int unless there is a good reason otherwise.

Converting between an unsigned int and a signed int has issues and is not always safe.

On a 32 bit system it is not possible for a collection to have anywhere close to 2^^32 items in it, so a signed int is big enough in all cases.

On a 64 bit system, an unsigned int does not gain you much, in most cases a signed int is still big enough, otherwise you need to use a 64 bit int. (I expect that none of the standard collection will cope well with anywhere near 2^^31 items on a 64 system!)

Therefore given that using an unsigned int has no clear advantage, why would you use an unsigned int?

1. It's not CLS compliant, largely to allow wider support from different languages.

2. A signed int offers ease in porting code from C or C++ that uses pointer arithmetic.

3. Count can be part of an expression where the overall value can be negative. In particular, count has a direct relationship to indices, where valid indices are always in the range [0, Count - 1], but negative results are used e.g. by some binary search methods (including those provided by the BCL) to reflect the position where a new item should be inserted to maintain order.

In vb.net, the normal looping construct (a "For/Next loop") will execute the loop with values up to and including the maximum value specified, unlike C which can easily loop with values below the upper limit. Thus, it is often necessary to specify a loop as e.g. "For I=0 To Array.Length-1"; if Array.Length were unsigned and and zero, that could cause an obvious problem. Even in C, one benefits from being able to say "for (i=Array.Length-1; i GE 0; --i)". Sometimes I think it would be useful to have a 31-bit integer type which would support widening casts to both signed and unsigned int, but I've never heard of a language supporting such.