From: David Brown <david@westcontrol.com>
To: Martin Sebor <msebor@gmail.com>,
Kostas Savvidis <ksavvidis@gmail.com>, <gcc-help@gcc.gnu.org>
Subject: Re: 128-bit integer - nonsensical documentation?
Date: Fri, 28 Aug 2015 06:54:00 -0000 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <55E005A7.6000002@westcontrol.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <55DF2814.3050206@gmail.com>
On 27/08/15 17:09, Martin Sebor wrote:
>> 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.
>
By "bi-endian types", you mean something like "int_be32_t" for a 32-bit
integer that is viewed as big-endian, regardless of whether the target
is big or little endian? (Alternatively, you could have "big_endian",
etc., as type qualifiers.) That would be an extremely useful feature -
it would make things like file formats, file systems, network protocols,
and other data transfer easier and neater. It can also be very handy in
embedded systems at times. I know that the Diab Data embedded compiler
suite, now owned by Wind River which is now owned by Intel, has support
for specifying endianness - at least in structures. If I remember
correctly, it is done with qualifiers rather than with extended integer
types.
I wonder if such mixed endian support would be better done using name
address spaces, rather than extended integer types?
(Sorry for changing the topic of the thread slightly - control of
endianness is one of the top lines in my wish-list for gcc features.)
David
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2015-08-28 6:54 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 18+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2015-08-26 11:04 Kostas Savvidis
2015-08-26 11:44 ` Jeffrey Walton
2015-08-26 12:13 ` David Brown
2015-08-26 16:02 ` Martin Sebor
2015-08-27 7:12 ` David Brown
2015-08-27 9:32 ` Jonathan Wakely
2015-08-27 9:42 ` Marc Glisse
2015-08-27 9:43 ` Jonathan Wakely
2015-08-27 15:09 ` Martin Sebor
2015-08-28 6:54 ` David Brown [this message]
2015-08-28 15:30 ` Martin Sebor
2015-08-26 12:22 ` Jonathan Wakely
2015-08-26 12:32 ` Kostas Savvidis
2015-08-26 12:39 ` Jonathan Wakely
2015-08-26 12:47 ` Jeffrey Walton
2015-08-26 12:47 ` David Brown
2015-08-26 12:48 ` Jeffrey Walton
2015-08-26 12:51 ` Marc Glisse
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