Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!aplcen!haven!adm!smoke!gwyn
From: gwyn@smoke.BRL.MIL (Doug Gwyn)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: bigger longs (64 bits)
Message-ID: <12195@smoke.BRL.MIL>
Date: 20 Feb 90 18:01:54 GMT
References: <11372@attctc.Dallas.TX.US> <194@hico2.UUCP>
Reply-To: gwyn@brl.arpa (Doug Gwyn)
Organization: Ballistic Research Lab (BRL), APG, MD.
Lines: 17

In article <194@hico2.UUCP> kak@hico2.UUCP (Kris A. Kugel) writes:
>We are starting to have problems because of the wide variety of
>wordsizes on the machines UNIX runs on.  Does it make sense that
>a long is such a different size on different machines?  What if
>you want a guarenteed precision?  I'm beginning to think that
>some kind of declaration construct  like int(need32) var; is needed.

This is not a UNIX issue, it's a programming language issue.

For C, the answer is, yes it DOES make sense to allow the implementation
to take into account the characteristics of the system it runs on.
There are ways in C to program portably; use them.

>We are only going to network more in the future, not less.

We're well aware of the issues you raised.  They are not properly
solved by tacking inadequate kludges onto programming languages.