Re: 128-bit integer - nonsensical documentation?

[Martin Sebor <msebor@gmail.com>]

> Is it fair to say that the main use of extended integers is to "fill the
> gaps" if the sequence char, short, int, long, long long has missing
> sizes?  Such as if an architecture defines int to be 64-bit and short to
> be 32-bit, then you could have an extended integer type for 16-bit?

Something like that. The extended integer types were invented by
the committee in hopes of a) easing the transition from 16-bit
to 32-bit to 64-bit implementations and b) making it possible for
implementers targeting new special-purpose hardware to extend the
language in useful and hopefully consistent ways to take advantage
of the new hardware. One idea was to support bi-endian types in
the type system. There was no experience with these types when
they were introduced and I don't have the impression they've been
as widely adopted as had been envisioned. Intel Bi-endian compiler
does provide support for "extended" mixed-endian types in the same
program.

Martin