Author: Robert Hyatt
Date: 14:36:11 01/09/03
Go up one level in this thread
On January 09, 2003 at 12:44:50, Matt Taylor wrote: >On January 08, 2003 at 16:06:38, Dieter Buerssner wrote: > >>On January 08, 2003 at 11:31:36, Miguel A. Ballicora wrote: >>Much snipped. >> >>>short --> not smaller than char >>[...] >>>I do not remember now whether a short can be smaller than 16 bits. >> >>No, it can't. My emphasis was on the fact, that the types were well defined, >>while Matt said, that the sizes were not. Not really a contradiction, also >>depends, on what is meant by "well defined". >> >>Regards, >>Dieter > >My recollections of old K&R C are similar to Miguel's. > >My definition of "well-defined" is "unambiguous without regard to machine." >While short, int, and long are unambiguous in the context of a -specific- >machine, they are very ambiguous in general. > >Anyway, C99 is 4 years after Java was introduced by Sun. The point I've made >stands here: Java had a 64-bit type before C standardized on it. It is more >likely then for people to make use of this in Java, and that spearheads >optimization of code generated for 64-bit types on Intel. Obviously this is >different for other platforms. > >As a matter of personal opinion, I find the idea of a "long long" silly. I would >rather use an "int64" when I want a 64-bit type and a plain "int" when I want a >type whose size is irrelevant (e.g. index to an array). In the spirit of K&R, >int should be 64-bits on a 64-bit platform. It is disappointing that this is not >always the case. > >-Matt I think the entire concept of "short", "int" and "long" are badly flawed. It would have been so much more logical and clean to simply go with int16, int32 and int64. I don't personally like "long long" as it is a syntactical oddity in light of char, short, int and float/double.
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