(unsigned)-1

[Joseph S. D. Yao]

In article <646 at cartan.Berkeley.EDU> ballou at brahms.Berkeley.EDU (Kenneth R. Ballou) writes:
>In article <800 at nscpdc.NSC.COM> djg at nscpdc.NSC.COM (Derek J. Godfrey) writes:
>>Enough! The C language conserns itself with the syntax and semantics
>>of its programs, not its pragmatisms(these are the concerns of compiler
>>writers and hackers :-) .)

Those "pragmatisms"  a r e  the semantics, and legitimate concerns.
Implementation details, of course, are implementation details; but
the meaning (semantics) of the language does not fall into that
category!  Compiler writers may not interpret (except where the
standard explicitly allows).  Compiler hackers, alas, often do.

>>		         this should dictate how to represent it. ( a
>>	collection of bits fields, a range a numbers (2^n -1 ) a
>>	combination of masks, or whatever.)
>
>	Again, I do not understand your point.  Could you please offer a
>clarification?

Ken, I thnk that djg is just trying to repeat again, the
First Law of Software Engineering:
	"Say What you Mean."
In other words, he is assuming that people might want to
set a word to ones as an alias for, e.g., some bit fields,
or "the highest number," or whatever; and that in those
instances they should use the appropriate constant instead.
And insofar as that goes, of course, he is absolutely right.

Of course, sometimes (bit-map graphics?) you  d o  just
want your ones.

"A cigar is sometimes just a cigar." - S. Freud
-- 

	Joe Yao		hadron!jsdy at seismo.{CSS.GOV,ARPA,UUCP}
			jsdy at hadron.COM (not yet domainised)