> (Torsten Mohrin) wrote:
>> Kenneth Whistler wrote:
>> So the first step to interoperability in big, interconnected system
>> software using C is to set up fundamental header files containing
>> well-defined datatypes of fixed sizes, to make up for the lack of same
>> in the definition of C itself. The lack of fixed-size datatypes in C
>> is now a *defect* in the language, and not an *asset* of the language.
> The latest revision of ISO C has introduced exact-width integer types
> (like "int8_t", "int16_t" and so on). These are also straightforward
> names rather than "short", "BYTE" or "DWORD".
I much prefer the convention of
SInt8, SInt16, SInt32, SInt64, SInt128...
UInt8, UInt16, UInt32, UInt64, UInt128...
SChar8, SChar16, SChar32...
UChar8, UChar16, UChar32...
so that whether the thing is signed or unsigned is explicit and
tightly bound, as it were.
I would think scientific programmers would want similar types
with ability to specify number of bits for mantissas and number
of bits and normalization for exponents, with the compilers
generating the code to work around the floating point functional
unit's characteristics to what is needed. E.g. SFloat128p16n8192
or some such.
The "_t", OTOH, seems affectatiously redundant.
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