Bit Addressable Architectures

[Larry McVoy]

In article <1988Mar14.193330.488 at utzoo.uucp> henry at utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer) writes:
>> Backwards compatibility?  With a C compiler insulating the user, the
>> only change is that sizeof(char) is now 8...
>
>Actually, even that incompatibility isn't necessary.  A C compiler is
>perfectly free to decide that it still counts in bytes.  
>............. given that the hypothetical machine we are discussing does

Hypothetical, my foot.  The ETA-10 compiler does exactly what you described.
Crazy thing also converts pointers into bit addresses (p<<3) when you 
put them into an int.  So think about what code this generates:

foo()
{
    register char* bar = (char*)malloc(123);
}

And then get out lint.

>out in the low-order digit.  Since octal is the way God meant programmers
>to count (the thumbs are parity bits) :-), this is clearly a Good Thing.
>-- 
>Those who do not understand Unix are |  Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
>condemned to reinvent it, poorly.    | {allegra,ihnp4,decvax,utai}!utzoo!henry

Jeez, Henry, I finally found something to date you by :-)  Doncha know
that hex is the wave to future?  (Actually, hex is really nice when you
do network debugging: it's easy to see when the byte order is ``wrong''.)
-- 

Larry McVoy	lm at arizona.edu or ...!{uwvax,sun}!arizona.edu!lm