Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!apple!bionet!ames!hc!lanl!jlg
From: jlg@lanl.gov (Jim Giles)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: int divided by unsigned.
Message-ID: <13986@lanl.gov>
Date: 13 Jul 89 00:25:13 GMT
References: <66203@yale-celray.yale.UUCP>
Distribution: na
Organization: Los Alamos National Laboratory
Lines: 18

From article <66203@yale-celray.yale.UUCP>, by Horne-Scott@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".