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From: mouse@mcgill-vision.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: bit patterns of all ones
Message-ID: <599@mcgill-vision.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 12-Jan-87 01:06:14 EST
Article-I.D.: mcgill-v.599
Posted: Mon Jan 12 01:06:14 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 17-Jan-87 16:22:28 EST
References: <1382@hoptoad.uucp> <690001@hplsla.HP.COM> <1527@hoptoad.uucp> <408@hadron.UUCP>
Organization: McGill University, Montreal
Lines: 27

In article <408@hadron.UUCP>, jsdy@hadron.UUCP (Joseph S. D. Yao) writes:
> On a ternary machine (what???) which some "solder-crazed EE" (was
> it?) might construct,

> Of course, lots of other things would break, too.  Divides by
> shifting, and even the meaning (to most folk) of shifting.

Could you even have C (as defined by K&R/H&S, or, alternatively, ANSI)
on such a machine?  Would you read "bit" to mean one of these ternary
digits (I won't abbreviate in a family newsgroup...:-) in things like
shifting and bitfields?  Does ANSI explicitly require binary
arithmetic?  I seem to recall reading a posting that talked about it
requiring "straight binary" representation for "unsigned int".

> Of course, that will never happen.  We will always have our binary,
> transistorised, 16- and 18-bit Neumann minicomputers.

Until they start building their own successors - after a while, we
won't know any more.  After a while longer, we may not be able to
understand any more.  Oh, sorry, this isn't net.sf-lovers :-?

					der Mouse

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