negative addresses

[Karl Heuer]

In article <1988May15.222335.13174 at utzoo.uucp> henry at utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer) writes:
>The biggest nuisance, actually, [with a nonzero representation for NULL] is
>the loss in effectiveness of the "BSS" optimization for object-module size.

One could implement separate segments for "integral BSS", "pointer BSS", and
"floating BSS".  Mixed-type aggregate BSS would still be the compiler's
responsibility, unless you have a really smart object format.

You'd probably also catch a few programs that (improperly) assume that
"int x; char *y;" allocates adjacent memory cells.

Karl W. Z. Heuer (ima!haddock!karl or karl at haddock.isc.com), The Walking Lint
(In the above, "BSS" means "uninitialized static-duration data".)
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