Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!att!dptg!rutgers!gatech!ncar!ico!ism780c!haddock!karl
From: karl@haddock.ima.isc.com (Karl Heuer)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: Carrying around excess baggage.
Message-ID: <14482@haddock.ima.isc.com>
Date: 31 Aug 89 01:08:17 GMT
References: <1418@atanasoff.cs.iastate.edu>
Reply-To: karl@haddock.ima.isc.com (Karl Heuer)
Organization: Interactive Systems, Cambridge, MA 02138-5302
Lines: 18

In article <1418@atanasoff.cs.iastate.edu> hascall@atanasoff.cs.iastate.edu (John Hascall) writes:
>Some items I would like to see investigated by the "committee on
>un-American programming activities":
>	# of bits in a byte
>	# of bytes in data types
>	endian-ness
>[etc.]

If the X3J11 Committee were to close its collective eyes and wish real hard,
would all the machines that aren't VAXen just disappear, or what?  How can you
possibly nail down something like this in a language standard?

>it sure would make writing portable code a lot easier

If all machines were alike, moving code from one to another would not be a
"port" by the current meaning of the word.

Karl W. Z. Heuer (ima!haddock!karl or karl@haddock.isc.com), The Walking Lint