Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!samsung!think!barmar
From: barmar@think.com (Barry Margolin)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: character strings, macros, ANSI c, multicharacter chars question
Keywords: string, multicharacter, ebcdic/ascii
Message-ID: <32685@news.Think.COM>
Date: 5 Jan 90 05:05:28 GMT
References: <1990Jan4.190431.19748@ultra.com>
Sender: news@Think.COM
Distribution: na
Organization: Thinking Machines Corporation, Cambridge MA, USA
Lines: 21

In article <1990Jan4.190431.19748@ultra.com> ted@ultra.com (Ted Schroeder) writes:
>Also, I would like to create an integer that is full of '+' characters
>i.e. on an ASCII machine the four byte integer would be 0x2b2b2b2b.  
>Unfortunately the code must run on both ASCII and EBCDIC machines.  
>Is there any portable way to do this?

I don't think this can be done fully portably, because you can't assume
that integers and chars are 32 and 8 bits wise, respectively.  If you're
will to be portably only to such systems (which is better than your
previous solution), I think the following will do it:

	'+'<<24 | '+'<<16 | '+'<<8 | '+'

You could also create a union of an integer and a four-character array full
of '+' characters.  This also isn't truly portable, but it will also work
on many systems.
--
Barry Margolin, Thinking Machines Corp.

barmar@think.com
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