Re: how to do bit-wise operation on none modular types?

[fraser@synopsys.synopsys.com.com]

I nearly cried when smize@imagin.net said:

>Do you get some advantage from the "more direct route" that compensates
>for it being somewhat less clear?  I would expect the type conversion
>to be a "view conversion" (terminology check) and so not to require
>a copy, so both code fragments would be equally efficient.

Do you find 'X mod 16#1_0000#' less clear than 'X and 16#FFFF#' (or even
'My_Mod (X) and 16#FFFF#'?  I'm quite the reverse.  I'm glad that the
bitwise operations on modular types are part of the language now, but
they still seem, um, low level.

I've recently written a couple of virtual machines for two wildly different
purposes, and there was a lot of bit fiddling going on, but I did it almost
exclusively with "/" and "mod", even though I was looking at modular types.
I suddenly wonder if I was wrong.  Oh, my.

Fraser.
(avoiding low level operations on a virtual machine code emulator -- maybe
I _am_ fooling myself :)