This seems related to Allow to specify the result type of a sum #5311, which was closed way back in 2016. You can, indeed, specify the result type of sum, but the type gets promoted anyway:
julia> typeof(sum(Int32, ones(Int32,3,4)))
Int64
Even explicitly requesting an output type for sum doesn’t do as asked. At some point a sum of a giant array might overflow, so promoting to a bigger integer makes sense. I guess the function/compiler can’t guess when that might occur, so it always promotes. But, it seems like a try/catch could do it. But, we wouldn’t like that in a function used so much.
Is this one of those “it’s gotta work that way” things?
The return type is Int for signed integers of less than system word size, and UInt for unsigned integers of less than system word size. For all other
arguments, a common return type is found to which all arguments are promoted.
...
Note the important difference between sum(A) and reduce(+, A) for arrays with small integer eltype:
julia> sum(Int8[100, 28])
128
julia> reduce(+, Int8[100, 28])
-128
In the former case, the integers are widened to system word size and therefore the result is 128. In the latter case, no such widening happens and integer
overflow results in -128.
help?> sum
search: sum sum! summary cumsum cumsum! isnumeric VersionNumber issubnormal get_zero_subnormals set_zero_subnormals
sum(f, itr)
Sum the results of calling function f on each element of itr.
The return type is Int for signed integers of less than system word size, and UInt for unsigned integers of less
than system word size. For all other arguments, a common return type is found to which all arguments are promoted.
Examples
≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡
julia> sum(abs2, [2; 3; 4])
29
Note the important difference between sum(A) and reduce(+, A) for arrays with small integer eltype:
julia> sum(Int8[100, 28])
128
julia> reduce(+, Int8[100, 28])
-128
In the former case, the integers are widened to system word size and therefore the result is 128. In the latter
case, no such widening happens and integer overflow results in -128.
it’s explicitly documented together with how to avoid this (reduce). (ninjad by @hendri54
So your guess is accurate.
In general I prefer it as it is. It would be more annoying for me, if I had to expect overflows using sum as it is widely used.
I think some deep thoughts have been put into this explicit implementation.
