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From: glen herrmannsfeldt <gah@ugcs.caltech.edu>
Newsgroups: sci.math,comp.lang.c,comp.lang.fortran,comp.lang.pl1,comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: KISS4691, a potentially top-ranked RNG.
Date: Fri, 29 Apr 2011 02:34:23 +0000 (UTC)
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Date: 2011-04-29T02:34:23+00:00
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In comp.lang.fortran David Bernier <david250@videotron.ca> wrote:

(snip)
> All we have now are George Marsaglia's posts and writings.
> I know there's now a move on the way to 64-bit processors,
> which I take to mean the x86_64 or AMD64 design/instruction set.

I have an actual Itanium system, but not so many people do.

> In any case, with an executable compiled with a C compiler,
> there's the function sizeof, which might be useful
> in some cases at run time.

Well, sizeof is a compile time constant, but, yes, you can
use the value at run time.
 
(snip)
> AFAIK, sizeof(unsigned long) can be relied upon to give the size
> in 8-bit bytes of a C "unsigned long".

No.  You need CHAR_BIT to tell how many bits are in a char.
It has been known to get to 64 on word addressed 64 bit machines.
It must be at least 8, but can be more.

-- glen