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From: dewar@cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar)
Subject: Re: ANSI C and POSIX (was Re: C/C++ knocks the crap out of Ada)
Date: 1996/04/09
Message-ID: <dewar.829050467@schonberg>#1/1
X-Deja-AN: 146540106
references: <JSA.96Feb16135027@organon.com> <4kb2j8$an0@solutions.solon.com>
 <4kbrt5$k3h@mulga.cs.mu.OZ.AU> <dewar.829012486@schonberg>
 <4kcpgkINNcku@keats.ugrad.cs.ubc.ca>
organization: Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences
newsgroups: comp.lang.ada,comp.lang.c,comp.lang.c++,comp.edu
Date: 1996-04-09T00:00:00+00:00
List-Id: <comp.lang.ada>

Kazimir quoted "Peter's FAQ" as saying:

1.3:    If I write the code

                int i, j;

        can I assume that (&i + 1) == &j?

A:      Only sometimes.  It's not portable, because in EBCDIC, i and j are
        not adjacent.


I think a smiley is missing here. This is a nice joke, but one can only
hope that no one thinks that the EBCDIC comment is technically relevant.

Incidentally, the answer that int should always be 64 bits on a 64-bit
machine is far too facile. This is a very tricky question, which has been
debated endlessly and no satisfactory solution found. There are very
delicate tradeoffs to be made between efficiency, functionality, and
portability here, and the final outcome is far from clear. Lots of C
programs assume that long is 32 bits. Yes of course they are broken,
yes of course this was a naughty assumption (of course ther is no way
in C to get a guaranteed 32-bit integer type, so it is not surprising
that C code is often broken in this manner). This means that making
int (and hence long?) 64 bits caues serious porability problems.

Yes, of course I talk about portability problems in a pragmatic sense,
it is the only useful sense in whch to discuss them, since the discussion
in purely language terms is vacuuous.