Re: Announce: Grace project site operational

["Randy Brukardt" <randy@rrsoftware.com>]

Marin David Condic wrote in message ...
>Of course, arguably, if a given implementation is only supporting 16
bit
>integers, it is likely to be for a machine (like the 1750a) that may
not
>easily handle larger sizes and may not have the large memory needed to
>support lists that would exceed the 32767 elements it could count
anyway.
>Its likely that you'd be working with a machine that had other
practical
>limits (like strings that can't get larger than 32767 characters
because
>they're indexed by Integers as well?) so would you really care? Its
just
>another implementation limit you have to work with - or modify the
source
>since you have it readily available.

The implementation in question supports 32-bit integers on all targets,
but "Integer" is 16-bits ("Long_Integer" is 32-bits). On some targets,
32-bit operations are more expensive; on 32-bit targets like the
Pentium, that's not even true, but "Integer" is 16-bits for
interoperability with the older targets.

Don't use Integer if you (may) need a range beyond 32767. (Which, BTW,
is a significant complaint of mine about the design of the standard
string libraries, but enough of that...)

            Randy.