Re: Integers on 64-bit machines

On 2007-07-05, Anton Ertl <anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at> wrote:
> For a C-like language (i.e., where integers have some connection to
> pointers, e.g., pointer arithmetic), the main integer type should have
> the same size as a pointer; for your 64-bit machines, it should be 64
> bits.


In C, integers have no connection to pointers, long has. However the
current situation of multiple models in use for 64-bit architectures
probably has to do with code that doesn't follow the exact guidelines.


> As for having a zoo of integer types like C, that's a bad idea in my
> experience. It causes lots of portability bugs; in contrast, in Forth
> there's one dominant integer type, the cell, which can also contain an
> address; in Forth portability bugs between 32-bit and 64-bit systems,
> and between different byte orders are very rare.


You need a range of fixed types ints anyway to be able to define a
structure that maps (at least nearly) any external structure, so that
you can communicate without marshalling.


[Jeez, I thought we got away from the abomination of pointers that are
longer than ints when we left the 286 large mode. No such luck, huh? -John]

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