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The 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 architect
by acuozzo 4y ago
The 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.