Newsgroups: comp.std.c
Path: utzoo!henry
From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: constant expressions
Message-ID: <1990Aug16.152345.29177@zoo.toronto.edu>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
References: <1916@tkou02.enet.dec.com> <13550@smoke.BRL.MIL> <1923@tkou02.enet.dec.com> <13555@smoke.BRL.MIL> <1924@tkou02.enet.dec.com>
Date: Thu, 16 Aug 90 15:23:45 GMT

In article <1924@tkou02.enet.dec.com> diamond@tkou02.enet.dec.com (diamond@tkovoa) writes:
>Besides clearly NOT REQUIRING translation-time evaluations, I have also seen
>clear REASONS for this non-requirement...

Given that the compiler is required to do type checking (must produce a
diagnostic for a violation of the rules), it's going to have to evaluate
constant expressions as subscripts in array declarations.

>If your target machine can handle
>128-bit ints, your host machine is not required to provide a simulator.

Provided it can get exactly the same effect, which is going to be tricky.
The *preprocessor* is not required to emulate target arithmetic, but the
rest of the compiler is nailed down pretty strictly.
-- 
It is not possible to both understand  | Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
and appreciate Intel CPUs. -D.Wolfskill|  henry@zoo.toronto.edu   utzoo!henry