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Subject: [TUHS] Re: Does anybody know the etymology of the term "word" as in collection of bits?
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On Sun, 11 Sep 2022, Paul Winalski wrote:

> 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.

When I first wrote C code I *assumed* things that were only necessarily 
true on the platform I learned on (char=8, short=16, long=32; int=16, 
pointer could be either 16 or 32, requiring the addition of the keywords 
"near" and "far").

(I'm glad C99 introduced <stdint.h>, but on that platform the only C99 
compiler is OpenWatcom.)

-uso.