int divided by unsigned.

Jim Giles jlg at lanl.gov
Thu Jul 13 10:25:13 AEST 1989


>From article <66203 at yale-celray.yale.UUCP>, by Horne-Scott at cs.yale.edu (Scott Horne):
> [...]    You probably don't want to make `int' a three-byte type; thus, make
> it four bytes.  (This is consistent with your twice-the-size argument, too.)
> What to do with `long'?  Well, you want it to be at least twice the size of
> an `int'.  But that's eight bytes--and the machine instructions can't handle
> eight-byte integers conveniently!  Heavens above! [...]

Oh, gee ... The language design might not be _convenient_ for some
machines.  That means my Smalltalk environment on the PC (with arbitrary
precision integer arithmetic) has done something _inconvenient_.  I have
other _compiled_ languages which have 64 bit integers, why can't C?

> Other problems arise, such as alignment.  Anyway, your demands force all
> implementations to use 1-byte `char's, 2-byte `short's, and 4-byte `int's.
> Doesn't this seem daft?

No, "daft" isn't the word I'd choose.  I might lean toward "portable", or
"well defined", but certainly not "daft".



More information about the Comp.lang.c mailing list