Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cornell!uw-beaver!uw-june!ka
From: ka@june.cs.washington.edu (Kenneth Almquist)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: checking for overflow in C
Message-ID: <8143@june.cs.washington.edu>
Date: 8 May 89 09:13:52 GMT
References: <13367@dartvax.Dartmouth.EDU> <1989May6.224226.22085@utzoo.uucp>
Organization: U of Washington, Computer Science, Seattle
Lines: 10

henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer) writes:
> C unfortunately has to be close to the hardware of a wide variety of
> machines.  There is no consensus on whether the hardware checks for overflow
> or not.  C generally prefers to reflect the underlying hardware rather
> than trying to hide it, so this lack of consensus shows to the programmer.

If there is not a consensus, there is certainly an overwhelming majority!
I know the assembly languages of half a dozen machines, and they all
include overflow checks.
				Kenneth Almquist