From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
From: jnc@mercury.lcs.mit.edu (Noel Chiappa)
Date: Fri, 11 Dec 2015 19:30:57 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [TUHS] why is sum reporting different checksum's between v6 and
	v7
Message-ID: <20151212003057.75C5B18C0CB@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>

    > From: Will Senn

    > I noticed that the sum utility from v6 reports a different checksum
    > than it does using the sum utility from v7 for the same file.
    > ... does anyone know what's going on here?
    > Why is sum reporting different checksum's between v6 and v7?

The two use different algorithms to accumulate the sum (I have added comments
to the relevant portion of the V6 assembler one, to help understand it):

V6:
	mov	$buf,r2		/ Pointer to buffer in R2
    2:	movb	(r2)+,r4	/ Get new byte into R4 (sign extends!)
	add	r4,r5		/ Add to running sum
	adc	r5		/ If overflow, add carry into low end of sum
	sob	r0,2b		/ If any bytes left, go around again

Read the description of MOVB in the PDP-11 Processor manual.

V7:
	while ((c = getc(f)) != EOF) {
		nbytes++;
		if (sum&01)
			sum = (sum>>1) + 0x8000;
		else
			sum >>= 1;
		sum += c;
		sum &= 0xFFFF;
		}

I'm not clear on some of that, so I'll leave its exact workings as an
exercise, but I'm pretty sure it's not a equivalent algorithm (as in,
something that would produce the same results); it's certainly not
identical. (The right shift is basically a rotate, so it's not a straight sum,
it's more like the Fletcher checksum used by XNS, if anyone remembers that.)

Among the parts I don't get, for instance, sum is declared as 'unsigned',
presumably 16 bits, so the last line _should_ be a NOP!? Also, with 'c' being
implicitly declared as an 'int', does the assignment sign extend? I have this
vague memory that it does. And does the right shift if the low bit is one
really do what the code seems to indicate it does? I have this bit that ASR on
the PDP-11 copies the high bit, not shifts in a 0 (check the processor
manual).  That is, of course, assuming that the compiler implements the '>>'
with an ASR, not a ROR followed by a clear of the high bit, or something.
  
	Noel