Re: number of bits of int type

[Louis Mamakos <louie@...>]

On Oct 3, 2010, at 7:14 AM, Martin Schröder wrote:

> 2010/10/3 Louis Mamakos <louie@transsys.com>:
>> On Oct 2, 2010, at 10:58 AM, Leo Razoumov wrote:
>>> Can you, please,  give an example of a currently produced platform
>>> with the int type being not a multiple of 8 bits.
>> 
>> Unisys 2200 series mainframe computers.  36 bit words, 1's complement arithmetic, word-addressable architecture.  Multi-processor and SMP since the early 1970's in the earlier versions of this architecture.  You might argue that Lua isn't likely to be found on this platform, though it supports an ANSI C complier, Java, etc.
> 
> And which of these are produced today in relevant quantities?

I never suggested they were produced in large quantities or that they were relevant to Lua.  The original question was regarding a currently produced platform where an integer wasn't a multiple of 8 bits.  There was considerably more diversity in CPU architecture in the past and that's reflected in some of the standards body work, e.g., ANSI C.

While it's been 15 or 20 years since I've written code for that CPU architecture, they still ship or at least are supported for their customers.  Lua would likely compile and work just fine because they implement a standard ANSI C compiler.

louie