On Mon, 2014-05-05 at 23:01 +0100, smplx wrote:
> On Sun, 4 May 2014, Byron Jeff wrote:

> > I'm pretty sure if you examine the architecture and speeds of the machi=
nes
> > these languages were originally developed for, you will fine that these
> > supposed "short cuts" were necessary.

C was developed a LONG time ago.  It was intended as a successor to B. B
had no data types - the only thing it recognized was a machine word.
The concept of data types was new, at least to AT&T. (Seems to me
FORTRAN had data types at the time, but FORTRAN was for an entirely
different purpose, probably considered as relevant as COBOL.)

I'm sure when coming up with the idea of typing data, simple rules would
have been preferred to some complex rules, even if the simple rules
misbehaved at the boundary cases.  The PDP-7 preferred for B was a very
different machine than the PDP-11. I suspect the dramatically different
architectures and the new concept of data types made the few
pathological cases of little concern.

One of the main interests in going beyond B was to take advantage of the
ability to address a character, something not possible on the 7.  I
imagine the subtleties of 16 versus 32 bit, signed versus unsigned were
of little interest when the main feature was working with characters.

If you have ever watched any of the early Unix videos, the AT&T folks
were really geeked about the whole concept of using the computer to
manipulate text.  That was clearly the focus, and back then, text was 7
bit, so no need to get all hung up over signed and unsigned.

--McD


--=20
http://www.piclist.com/techref/piclist PIC/SX FAQ & list archive
View/change your membership options at
http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist
.