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It seems like failing to be strict about defining behavior and expectations under all conceivable circumstances (such as leaving the actual bit length of certai
by pmarreck 4y ago
It seems like failing to be strict about defining behavior and expectations under all conceivable circumstances (such as leaving the actual bit length of certain integer types to be "up to the architecture to decide" in order to "remain flexible") is always a long-term design mistake.
- acuozzo 4y agoThe standards committee couldn't deprecate all of the C written prior to 1989 in order to redesign the language. C compilers existed for all kinds of architectures at that time, including CPUs featuring 36-bit (yes, thirty-six bits) words. A lack of flexibility would have resulted in a lack of adoption which would have rendered their work meaningless.
- none_to_remain 4y agoAs far as I know to this day there are DSP platforms where a C char is 32 or 64 bits because that is what the platform can address. There's a macro, CHAR_BIT I think, that you can use to get a bit count if you're attempting to write really portable C
- acuozzo 4y agoExactly. This is the kind of flexibility I was referencing in my reply.