Re: remark on defining size of basic types

On 05.04.2024 01:38, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:

On Thu, 4 Apr 2024 15:15:26 +0200, Janis Papanagnou wrote:
 

Sometimes it's useful to have an unbounded or parameterized integral
data type available ...

 
Interestingly, Fortran (of all things) has that.

Was that the e.g. '*8' syntax? - Did it allow arbitrary lengths?
I thought you could select only from few supported ranges (like,
the C scalar types, but declared as *1, *2, *4, *8, and that's
it). (I have only faint memories about Fortran, did not use it
for long.)

In Pascal you could define subranges, but I think also only on a
fixed integral base type, and Ada seems to have a similar concept.

But GNU Awk supports multiple precision arithmetic, optionally.
(No explicit data type, though.)

I'm reluctant[*] to say that I think Cobol[**] as well has such a
feature. And I think it had no size restriction on a machine word
as the other languages mentioned above. - Is that correct?

(That language feature might have got out of fashion long ago?)

Janis

[*] Some folks here might feel offended by mentioning Cobol again.

[**] A language I never programmed myself in.