INTL 3:770/1 3:770/3   
   REPLYADDR ldo@nz.invalid   
   REPLYTO 3:770/3.0 UUCP   
   MSGID:  2455bdaf   
   REPLY:  70fea57e   
   PID: SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
   On Sun, 1 Sep 2024 11:07:17 +0100, mm0fmf wrote:   
      
   > Or you were programming in C on an Analog Devices SHARC were char was 32   
   > bits.   
      
   I was watching a video clip the other day which talked about the Symbolics   
   3600 Lisp Machine from the 1980s. This one had core Lisp constructs like   
   garbage collection and arbitrary-precision integers programmed into its   
   microcode.   
      
   When they came to implement a C compiler, they didn’t bother defining   
   finite-precision integers for it: they just had it use the arbitrary-   
   precision ones, since they were already available in the machine   
   instruction set. The “sizeof” operator did return small, fixed values for   
   types, but for integers, they were essentially meaningless.   
      
   Somebody wrote a test program to determine how large an integer was, by   
   initializing a variable to 1 and left-shifting it until it overflowed and   
   went to zero.   
      
   The program ran for over an hour, exhausted all the available memory, and   
   crashed.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)   
   SEEN-BY: 1/19 16/0 19/37 80/1 90/1 105/81 106/201 123/130 129/305   
   SEEN-BY: 142/104 153/757 7715 203/0 218/700 840 220/70 221/1 6 242   
   SEEN-BY: 221/360 226/17 30 100 227/114 229/110 111 114 200 206 300   
   SEEN-BY: 229/317 400 426 428 470 550 616 664 700 230/0 240/5832 266/512   
   SEEN-BY: 267/800 280/5003 282/1038 291/111 292/854 301/1 310/31 320/119   
   SEEN-BY: 320/219 319 2119 322/757 762 325/304 335/364 341/66 342/200   
   SEEN-BY: 396/45 423/81 460/58 633/280 712/848 770/1 3 100 330 340   
   SEEN-BY: 772/210 220 230 5020/400 5053/58 5058/104 5075/35   
   PATH: 770/3 1 218/840 221/6 1 320/219 229/426