From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: dexen deVries To: Fans of the OS Plan 9 from Bell Labs <9fans@9fans.net> Date: Sat, 5 May 2012 19:52:47 +0200 Message-ID: <1941502.uSA3vSiS8P@blitz> User-Agent: KMail/4.8.2 (Linux/3.4.0-rc5-l48; KDE/4.8.2; x86_64; ; ) In-Reply-To: References: <1411330.QJAbfBr5F9@blitz> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7Bit Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Subject: Re: [9fans] integer width on AMD64 (was: Re: AMD64 system) Topicbox-Message-UUID: 84221848-ead7-11e9-9d60-3106f5b1d025 On Saturday 05 of May 2012 18:48:37 Charles Forsyth wrote: > many existing C programs (and not just on Plan 9) think long is 32 bits, or > don't care. > those that do care don't work. for those that don't care, it doesn't matter. > it's quite difficult to decide automatically (eg, in a compiler) into which > category a program falls. > a compiler can't easily detect that a program expected 32 bits only and > will malfunction with 64. > (..snip..) thank you and erik for the explanations, makes perfect sense now :-) -- dexen deVries Until real software engineering is developed, the next best practice is to develop with a dynamic system that has extreme late binding in all aspects. -- Alan Kay