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From: Pietro Gagliardi <pietro10@mac.com>
To: Fans of the OS Plan 9 from Bell Labs <9fans@9fans.net>
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Date: Mon,  5 May 2008 06:16:44 -0400
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Subject: Re: [9fans] A new language for Plan 9
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On May 4, 2008, at 10:24 PM, andrey mirtchovski wrote:

>> Set for the next release: bit arrays.
>
> "I'd use plan 9 before i'd use bitfields" -- pjw
>
I'm aware of that quote. The design of bit arrays will be totally
different from the design of bitfields. They are true arrays that can
be used in an implementation-independent manner. Given

	b: 32 bits
	b[0] := 4

the compiler will determine whether b[0] is at the far left or far
right of the binary version of that value. This means you can have
code, theoretically, like

	function getlong: 32 bits
		b: 32 bits
		b[31..24] := getchar - '0'
		b[23..16] := getchar - '0'
		b[15..8] := getchar - '0'
		b[7..0] := getchar - '0'
		return b

and then use getlong as follows:

	x: 32 bits = getlong
	if x = 400 then
		{ ... }

This is a severe blow to bit fields.

No, I'm not doing a school assignment. This is more of a hobby project.