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From: bakul@bitblocks.com (Bakul Shah)
Subject: [TUHS] origins of void*  -- Apology!
Date: Mon, 6 Nov 2017 17:09:09 -0800	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <E0183799-3153-4DFD-9879-47515821F8BA@bitblocks.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <065d01d3575e$f71f6ad0$e55e4070$@ronnatalie.com>

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> On Nov 6, 2017, at 4:25 PM, Ron Natalie <ron at ronnatalie.com> wrote:
> 
> I believe one of C’s biggest failings is that they did not solve the schizophrenic definition of char*.
>  
> Char* as historically implemented and then  CODIFIED in the C and C++ standards is both the basic character type as well as the smallest addressable unit of storage.
> This was all peachy keen in the 8 bit ASCII days (and even earlier alternative character sets such as EBCDIC, and its predecessors and other historical character sets like UNIVAC’s fielddata), but fell apart when we started into the 16 bit and larger UNICODE.
>  
> We needed a basic memory type that had sizeof == 1 (which void*) did not meet and release char from having to play double duty.

C has had uint8_t since C99.

void* serves a different purpose. It says this is an
untyped pointer (or a ptr to an instance of any type)
so no question of size being an issue. It shouldn't
even have been "void*". I would've preferred _* and
_ instead of void* and void. Much more appropriate for
a concise language like C!


  parent reply	other threads:[~2017-11-07  1:09 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 48+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2017-11-04 10:19 [TUHS] origins of void* Paul Ruizendaal
2017-11-05  9:48 ` Clem Cole
2017-11-05 10:06 ` arnold
2017-11-05 13:20   ` Ron Natalie
2017-11-05 15:14     ` Warner Losh
2017-11-05 17:53       ` Clem cole
2017-11-05 18:29         ` Steve Simon
2017-11-05 20:12           ` Clem cole
2017-11-05 21:08             ` Chet Ramey
2017-11-05 21:38               ` Clem cole
2017-11-05 21:53             ` Steve Simon
2017-11-05 20:44   ` Paul Ruizendaal
2017-11-05 21:06     ` Warner Losh
2017-11-06  7:24     ` arnold
2017-11-06 15:02       ` Warner Losh
2017-11-06 21:46         ` [TUHS] origins of void* -- Apology! Steve Johnson
2017-11-06 22:18           ` Warner Losh
2017-11-07  0:25           ` Ron Natalie
2017-11-07  0:34             ` Arthur Krewat
2017-11-07  0:36               ` Ron Natalie
2017-11-07  1:09             ` Bakul Shah [this message]
2017-11-07  1:55               ` Ron Natalie
2017-11-08 17:44               ` Ralph Corderoy
2017-11-08 19:56                 ` Ron Natalie
2017-11-08 20:39                   ` Don Hopkins
2017-11-08 20:42                     ` Ron Natalie
2017-11-08 20:47                       ` Don Hopkins
2017-11-08 20:48                         ` Don Hopkins
2017-11-08 20:43                     ` Don Hopkins
2017-11-08 20:43                     ` Clem Cole
2017-11-08 20:45                     ` Warner Losh
2017-11-09  6:33                       ` Lars Brinkhoff
2017-11-08 20:50                   ` Steve Nickolas
2017-11-08 21:25                 ` Bakul Shah
2017-11-09  6:37                   ` Lars Brinkhoff
2017-11-09  7:14                     ` Don Hopkins
2017-11-09  7:44                       ` Lars Brinkhoff
2017-11-10 23:43                       ` [TUHS] PowerPC, bit twiddling - was " Toby Thain
2017-11-10 23:58                         ` Ralph Corderoy
2017-11-07 15:34 [TUHS] " Nelson H. F. Beebe
2017-11-08 12:48 ` Tony Finch
2017-11-08 13:36   ` Otto Moerbeek
2017-11-08 16:03   ` Warner Losh
2017-11-08 16:07 Nemo
2017-11-08 16:12 ` Warner Losh
2017-11-08 19:59   ` Ron Natalie
2017-11-08 23:33   ` Steffen Nurpmeso
2017-11-09  1:35   ` Steve Johnson

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