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From: ludemann@ubc-cs.UUCP (Peter Ludemann)
Newsgroups: net.lang.c
Subject: Re: boolean datatype
Message-ID: <274@ubc-cs.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 11-Jun-86 22:31:15 EDT
Article-I.D.: ubc-cs.274
Posted: Wed Jun 11 22:31:15 1986
Date-Received: Sun, 15-Jun-86 03:15:48 EDT
References: <5498@alice.uUCp> <1462@mmintl.UUCP> <852@bentley.UUCP>
Reply-To: ludemann@ubc-cs.UUCP (Peter Ludemann)
Distribution: net
Organization: UBC Department of Computer Science, Vancouver, B.C., Canada
Lines: 23

In article <399@peregrine.UUCP> mike@peregrine.UUCP (Mike Wexler) writes:
>In article <705@wjvax.wjvax.UUCP> brett@wjvax.UUCP (Brett Galloway) writes:
>>In article <393@peregrine.UUCP> mike@peregrine.UUCP (Mike Wexler) writes:

>>I would prefer an operator that merely generated an integral type based on
>>a number of bits requested, not based on a desired range.  For example,
>>on a machine with 8-bit char, 16-bit short, 32-bit int, and 64-bit long,
>>bittype(8) == char; bittype(9) == short; bittype(31) == int; and so on.
>
>It also puts the burden on the user to figure out how many bits are needed
>to store a particular number.  This could lead to either less efficient code
>or nonportable code due to problems with signed/unsigned variables.  

WSL (Waterloo Systems Language) has what you want.  It's basically a 
tidied up version of C.  The syntax is like Pascal, but no range 
checking is actually done.  So "i:1..10" would be C's "char i"; while 
"i:0..1000" would be C's "unsigned short int i".  

A commercial data centre evalutated WSL and probably would have used 
it except for the detail that there existed no WSL->C and C->WSL 
translators.  But the implementation looked quite good.  For more 
info, contact WatSoft at the University of Waterloo, Waterloo, 
Ontario, Canada.  (The book is available separately.)