Sujet : Re: evolution of bytes, The joy of FORTRAN
De : ldo (at) *nospam* nz.invalid (Lawrence D'Oliveiro)
Groupes : alt.folklore.computers comp.os.linux.miscDate : 04. Mar 2025, 00:38:55
Autres entêtes
Organisation : A noiseless patient Spider
Message-ID : <vq5eie$1h3mg$10@dont-email.me>
References : 1 2 3 4 5 6
User-Agent : Pan/0.162 (Pokrosvk)
On Mon, 3 Mar 2025 06:54:32 -0700, Peter Flass wrote:
This was probably a reaction against PL/I where sizes are specified
explicitly, such as “bit(8) unsigned”.
Computers had a whole range of word sizes in those days. What was the best
way to write portable code? The PL/I approach was to let the programmer
explicitly specify the number of bits and digits for everything, and damn
the inefficiency.