I am dealing with basically a bit-flag search mask and I'm using vectors. These indexes need to go up to the max integer on the machine (defined in stdint.h)
Basically the problem is
searchMask[ UINTMAX_MAX] = false; // or any value > unsigned int
results in the following warning
warning: C4244: 'argument' : conversion from 'uintmax_t' to 'unsigned int',
possible loss of data
I have considered just using something like an unsigned char* = "1110010..." and just flipping the bits that way, but dealing with C-strings is always a pain and I suspect accessing the char array index will have this same size problem?
Can I make the indexes of the vector go off the uintmax_t, or should I go the C string route, or what?
Practically all the STL containers will use size_t as their size types. So, depending on your system, size_t might be defined as an unsigned int, which will probably be a 32-bit integer in your case. That would explain why the compiler is complaining.
UINTMAX_MAX is defined as UINT64_MAX, so it won't fit in a 32-bit integer. Try using the UINT32_MAX macro, or be platform-independant and use std::numeric_limits<size_t>::max().
Also, try using std::bitset<N>.