Re: Thou shalt have no other gods before the ANSI C standard

From: CBFalconer (cbfalconer_at_yahoo.com)
Date: 02/08/05 

Date: Tue, 08 Feb 2005 14:34:24 GMT

"D. J. Bernstein" wrote:
>
... snip ...
>
> Yes, there are some areas where computers haven't converged yet.
> Yes, this means extra work for programmers writing portable code.
> But this problem is _much_ smaller than it used to be. The areas
> of variability are being pushed farther and farther away from
> anything that typical programmers care about. That's progress.

The majority of machines do fit the 8 bit byte power of 2 sized
integer description. But not all. At the same time there is no
need whatsoever to impose those restrictions on most code. So the
advice to make such assumptions is inherently bad, and causes more
non-portable trouble making code to be created.

"Know your limitations" - Dirty Harry. 

-- 
"If you want to post a followup via groups.google.com, don't use
 the broken "Reply" link at the bottom of the article.  Click on 
 "show options" at the top of the article, then click on the 
 "Reply" at the bottom of the article headers." - Keith Thompson
Quantcast