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From: Simon Clubley <clubley@remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: What is a byte?
Date: Tue, 29 Jul 2014 23:08:40 +0000 (UTC)
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Date: 2014-07-29T23:08:40+00:00
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On 2014-07-29, Dan'l Miller <optikos@verizon.net> wrote:
> On Tuesday, July 29, 2014 1:40:56 PM UTC-5, Simon Wright wrote:
>> "Dan'l Miller" writes:
>> > ...  (No specification of any
>> > modern interoperable protocol uses the 2^8 and higher bits in a byte
>> > if they exist on some arcade hardware.)
>> 
>> I don't think this is right (not in terms of how the ABI expects a char
>> to be passed to a function, but in terms of what Victor ought to do).
>> 
>> If the C function takes a char, you should specify
>> Interfaces.C.char. It's up to the compiler to decide whether that gets
>> passed in 8 bits, 32 bits, or come to that 9/36 bits on hardware that no
>> one is remotely likely to encounter (even in an arcade).
>
> That dang spell check has become my worst enema:  arcane, not arcade.

FYI, someone (a long time ago) actually ported gcc to the PDP-10. :-)

See: http://pdp10.nocrew.org/gcc/

(No Ada port however.)

Simon.

-- 
Simon Clubley, clubley@remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP
Microsoft: Bringing you 1980s technology to a 21st century world