Re: technology discussion → does the world need a "new" C ?

Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> writes:

On Fri, 05 Jul 2024 19:00:58 -0700, Keith Thompson wrote:

C assumes byte addressibility, but it doesn't assume that bytes are 8
bits.
 
The PDP-10 had 36-bit words and could operate on bit fields of any size
from 1 to 36 bits.

>
But it couldn’t address them.

There was a project to add PDP-10 support to GCC.  It had CHAR_BIT==9.
I don't know any of the details.

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

Cray vector systems like the T90 have (had?) 64-bit words as the
smallest addressible unit.  The C compilers emulated 8-bit byte
addressing in software.

--
Keith Thompson (The_Other_Keith) Keith.S.Thompson+u@gmail.com
void Void(void) { Void(); } /* The recursive call of the void */