Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cs.utexas.edu!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!bloom-beacon!spdcc!ima!haddock!karl
From: karl@haddock.ima.isc.com (Karl Heuer)
Newsgroups: comp.std.c
Subject: Re: sizeof in 36-bits machines
Message-ID: <14904@haddock.ima.isc.com>
Date: 17 Oct 89 01:24:34 GMT
References: <272@ssp1.idca.tds.philips.nl> <11284@smoke.BRL.MIL> <398@cpsolv.UUCP> <11300@smoke.BRL.MIL>
Reply-To: karl@haddock.ima.isc.com (Karl Heuer)
Organization: Interactive Systems, Cambridge, MA 02138-5302
Lines: 17

In article <11300@smoke.BRL.MIL> gwyn@brl.arpa (Doug Gwyn) writes:
>[a 36-bit machine having 8-bit char would be] allowed ONLY if the "extra"
>bits are also skipped in accessing integer, etc. data.  In other words, the
>implementor need not use all the bits in a word, but if he's going to ignore
>some of them in the char array context, he must ignore them also in other
>contexts.  It would seem to be a pretty dumb implementation decision to do
>that.

I dunno, it might be useful for porting ATWAV code to a PDP-10.

>>Alternatively, you could just make sizeof(int)=sizeof(char)=1

It remains to be seen whether this is legal, and if so, what happens when the
input stream contains a bit pattern that compares equal to the value of EOF.

Karl W. Z. Heuer (ima!haddock!karl or karl@haddock.isc.com), The Walking Lint
#define ATWAV All-The-World's-A-Vax.