Path: utzoo!yunexus!geac!daveb
From: daveb@geac.UUCP (David Collier-Brown)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: Machines for testing portability (was Re: "Numerical Recipes in C" is nonportable code)
Message-ID: <3194@geac.UUCP>
Date: 2 Sep 88 12:27:39 GMT
Article-I.D.: geac.3194
References: <795@ns.UUCP>
Organization: GEAC Computers, Toronto, CANADA
Lines: 22

>>In article <1673@dataio.Data-IO.COM> bright@dataio.Data-IO.COM (Walter Bright) writes:
>>: The best way to learn to write portable code is to be required to port
>>: your applications to Vaxes, 68000s, and PCs. (I have all 3 on my desk!)

From article <795@ns.UUCP>, by ddb@ns.UUCP (David Dyer-Bennet):
>   No portability check is complete until you've tried some word-oriented
> rather than byte-oriented system.  Preferrably something with a word-size
> not a multiple of 8 bits (like 60, or 36).  CDC, Unisys, Honeywell, and of
> course the DEC PDP-10 series all come to mind.

  Actually the 9-bit byte machines are fairly easy to port to: all
sorts of code of varying quality will run on the Honeywell-Bull
DPS-8 using the Waterloo C Compiler.  Try a machine with funny
pointer lengths like the DPS-6, though...  Its an 8-bit byte, but
char pointers are 48 bits and others are 32, if you use to high an
address the system will trap even loading a register, etc, etc.

--dave (Bell labs had a DPS-8 C compiler many moons ago) c-b
-- 
 David Collier-Brown.  |{yunexus,utgpu}!geac!lethe!dave
 78 Hillcrest Ave,.    | He's so smart he's dumb.
 Willowdale, Ontario.  |        --Joyce C-B