From: Paul Winalski <paul.winalski@gmail.com>
To: Bakul Shah <bakul@iitbombay.org>
Cc: Douglas McIlroy <douglas.mcilroy@dartmouth.edu>,
TUHS main list <tuhs@tuhs.org>
Subject: [TUHS] Re: Does anybody know the etymology of the term "word" as in collection of bits?
Date: Sun, 11 Sep 2022 11:45:40 -0400 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <CABH=_VRHdMW+OmsoiXpthTk97-E0O93jXmbU407rCfx770AzVQ@mail.gmail.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <45A8556C-CAFE-420A-8571-974B9D67D436@iitbombay.org>
On 9/11/22, Bakul Shah <bakul@iitbombay.org> wrote:
>
> C's INT_MAX, LONG_MAX etc are kind of an environment enquiry...
What size to use in C for int and long (pointers had to be 64-bit; no
issue there) was a big headache for DEC in the migration of Unix
(Ultrix) from VAX to Alpha. The first C compiler implementation used
ILP64 (64 bits for int, long, and pointer) and ran afoul of a lot of
code that assumed an int was 32 bits. ILP64 vs. LP64 because as
divisive an issue as the big-endian vs. little-endian debate.
-Paul W.
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2022-09-11 15:47 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 26+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2022-09-11 13:30 Douglas McIlroy
2022-09-11 15:08 ` John Cowan
2022-09-11 15:30 ` Bakul Shah
2022-09-11 15:45 ` Paul Winalski [this message]
2022-09-11 16:20 ` Steve Nickolas
-- strict thread matches above, loose matches on Subject: below --
2022-09-09 19:39 Nelson H. F. Beebe
2022-09-09 20:27 ` Bakul Shah
2022-09-09 21:12 ` Henry Bent
2022-09-09 21:44 ` Dave Horsfall
2022-09-09 18:46 Norman Wilson
2022-09-10 1:35 ` Paul Winalski
2022-09-09 17:26 Douglas McIlroy
2022-09-09 1:33 Douglas McIlroy
2022-09-09 2:12 ` Larry McVoy
2022-09-13 14:23 ` John Foust via TUHS
2022-09-09 2:45 ` George Michaelson
2022-09-16 5:55 ` Marc Donner
2022-09-08 21:16 Noel Chiappa
2022-09-08 21:24 ` Dan Halbert
2022-09-08 18:20 Noel Chiappa
2022-09-08 19:28 ` Jim Capp
2022-09-08 16:51 [TUHS] " Jon Steinhart
2022-09-08 16:56 ` [TUHS] " Andrew Hume
2022-09-08 17:28 ` Dan Halbert
2022-09-09 0:00 ` Greg 'groggy' Lehey
2022-09-09 15:49 ` Paul Winalski
2022-09-09 18:44 ` Bakul Shah
Reply instructions:
You may reply publicly to this message via plain-text email
using any one of the following methods:
* Save the following mbox file, import it into your mail client,
and reply-to-all from there: mbox
Avoid top-posting and favor interleaved quoting:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posting_style#Interleaved_style
* Reply using the --to, --cc, and --in-reply-to
switches of git-send-email(1):
git send-email \
--in-reply-to='CABH=_VRHdMW+OmsoiXpthTk97-E0O93jXmbU407rCfx770AzVQ@mail.gmail.com' \
--to=paul.winalski@gmail.com \
--cc=bakul@iitbombay.org \
--cc=douglas.mcilroy@dartmouth.edu \
--cc=tuhs@tuhs.org \
/path/to/YOUR_REPLY
https://kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/git-send-email.html
* If your mail client supports setting the In-Reply-To header
via mailto: links, try the mailto: link
Be sure your reply has a Subject: header at the top and a blank line
before the message body.
This is a public inbox, see mirroring instructions
for how to clone and mirror all data and code used for this inbox;
as well as URLs for NNTP newsgroup(s).