Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!husc6!think!ames!ucsd!ucsdhub!hp-sdd!hplabs!sri-unix!quintus!ok
From: ok@quintus.UUCP (Richard A. O'Keefe)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: negative addresses (really unsigned arithmetic)
Message-ID: <976@cresswell.quintus.UUCP>
Date: 14 May 88 10:46:54 GMT
References: <2393@uvacs.CS.VIRGINIA.EDU> <9485@apple.Apple.Com> <11592@ut-sally.UUCP>
Organization: Quintus Computer Systems, Mountain View, CA
Lines: 32

In article <11592@ut-sally.UUCP>, nather@ut-sally.UUCP (Ed Nather) writes:
> In article <965@cresswell.quintus.UUCP>, ok@quintus.UUCP (Richard A. O'Keefe) writes:
> 
> > (2) I am getting sick of computers which cannot do integer arithmetic
> >     and won't admit their mistakes.  Floating-point was bad enough,
> >     but when a computer will add 1 to a positive number and give me
> >     a negative number it's time we cleaned up our act.  
> 
> I agree, but I'm pretty sure floating point isn't much of an answer.

I didn't suggest it was!  No way!  [Quick exercise:  supposing 32-bit
integers and 32-bit IEEE floats, find numbers X, Y, Z such that
	X.GE.Y .AND. Y.GE.Z .AND. X.LT.Z
in a conforming Fortran-77 -- declarations may be needed.]

> Now, if we designed computers so integer word sizes were large enough to
> hold the largest number we now use in floating point (ca. 2^512 or so)

My point is that "word size" is an implementation detail which is of
interest to people writing device drivers, operating systems, compilers,
&c, but that most of my programs couldn't care less.  If I declare a
512-bit integer and the machine has 32-bit registers, it's the compiler's
job to cope.  All of the machines I am familiar with except the B6700
have support for multi-precision integer arithmetic, and the B6700 could
deal with 78-bit + sign integers anyway.  What's the good of ADDC.L and
the rest if the compiler won't generate them?

I appreciate that there are applications where the "C" model is appropriate.
But why should COBOL be the only language I can do 18-digit integer
arithmetic in?  (LISP has arbitrary precision integers and rationals, but
that requires dynamic storage management, which I also like, but one dream
at a time.)