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From: dhesi@bsu-cs.UUCP (Rahul Dhesi)
Newsgroups: rec.games.hack,comp.sources.bugs
Subject: Re: Help w/ NETHACK & MSC v4.0
Message-ID: <1100@bsu-cs.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 4-Sep-87 13:39:22 EDT
Article-I.D.: bsu-cs.1100
Posted: Fri Sep  4 13:39:22 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 5-Sep-87 18:27:41 EDT
References: <616@hadron.UUCP> <3470@zen.berkeley.edu> <1079@bsu-cs.UUCP> <5191@drutx.ATT.COM>
Reply-To: dhesi@bsu-cs.UUCP (Rahul Dhesi)
Organization: CS Dept, Ball St U, Muncie, Indiana
Lines: 35
Summary: confusion about units and notation
Xref: mnetor rec.games.hack:1362 comp.sources.bugs:264

I wrote:
     A lot of things under MS-DOS are measured in units of 16-byte
     clicks.  Thus, when you specify a stack of 0xa00 bytes, you may be
     really specifying 0xa00 clicks, which is 0xa000 bytes or 40
     kilobytes.

Brian Jones triumphantly declares:
     The above 'information' is INCORRECT.

     Both the MASM and MSC manuals specify the /STACK:number option as
     specifying the number of BYTES to be allocated to the stack.  >

This is technically correct for the version of the linker I have, but
misses the basic point.

The basic point is that Microsoft uses units and notation very
inconsistently.  Sometimes Microsoft uses bytes, sometimes 16-byte
clicks.  Sometimes Microsoft uses decimal, sometimes hexadecimal, and
sometimes you get a choice.

For the linker, you either have to use bytes, or 16-byte clicks,
depending on the particular option you are specifying.  My version of
the linker, which is about two years old,  wants /STACK in bytes but
/CPARMAXALLOC in 16-byte clicks.  This is no guarantee that other
versions of the linker want the same units.

There are plenty of examples of confusion.  One that sticks in my mind
is that in earlier versions of MS-DOS, you needed to specify
environment space to the command interpreter in 16-byte units.  Then
suddenly, a version later, you had to specify it in bytes.

The moral is to make sure you always double-check the units and the
notation needed.
-- 
Rahul Dhesi         UUCP:  {ihnp4,seismo}!{iuvax,pur-ee}!bsu-cs!dhesi