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The worst case is that there would not be an ISO C for such machines. As they are very unusual, this does not strike me as a big deal, and definitely less of an
by mannykannot 8y ago
The worst case is that there would not be an ISO C for such machines. As they are very unusual, this does not strike me as a big deal, and definitely less of an issue than making it easier to avoid invoking undefined behavior.
I take your point about the possible motives behind this proposal, which seem quite plausible.
- kazinator 8y agoBut gutting support for sign-magnitude machines has nothing to do with making certain two's complement behaviors defined. It's like saying we have to drop USB 1.0 support in an OS in order to fix missing features in the Bluetooth stack.
- mannykannot 8y agoI don't think that analogy works well, because if there was a dependency in standards that led to this outcome, would it not be better to break the dependency going forward, or to have avoided it in the first place? And not having an ISO C standard for sign-magnitude machines (which is not a necessary consequence of the proposed change, it is just the worst case, depending on how ISO chose to deal with the consequences for such machines) does not necessarily force an end to actual C support for them.