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Path: utzoo!henry
From: henry@utzoo.UUCP (Henry Spencer)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: standardizing integral type sizes
Message-ID: <7917@utzoo.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 16-Apr-87 11:30:00 EST
Article-I.D.: utzoo.7917
Posted: Thu Apr 16 11:30:00 1987
Date-Received: Thu, 16-Apr-87 11:30:00 EST
References: <791@xanth.UUCP>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
Lines: 19

> I would like to see the sizes of C integral types standardized.  It would be
> much easier to write portable code if when I define a variable as an 'int' I
> could automatically know that its range is -128 to 127, or -32768 to 32768,
> etc.
> ...
> Besides savaging quite a few C implementations, what are the other drawbacks
> to this?...

It loses us the current semantics of "int", which are "the form of integer
that is most efficient on the machine in question".  Since most well-written
code doesn't care whether int is 16 or 32 bits (N.B. there is a lot of
badly-written code in the world), current C compilers are free to pick the
one that runs faster.  This can make quite a difference in performance.
All the world is *not* a VAX.

To quote Dennis Ritchie:  "if you want PL/I, you know where to find it".
-- 
"We must choose: the stars or	Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
the dust.  Which shall it be?"	{allegra,ihnp4,decvax,pyramid}!utzoo!henry