Re: [Timber] 64 bit?

Also, since this is supposed to be a bit of a bare metal run time system, wouldn't it make sense to have Int match the size of the architecture? It would remove a superfluous (IMO) abstraction.

It is reasonable, although the big drawback is that the meaning of programs will then be platform-dependent in a very unfortunate way. For example, the expression 60000 + 10000 > 60000 will be true on some platforms but false on 16-bit architectures. I have no problem with the wrap-around semantics for integers (it's what we want!), but it should be specified by the language to mean the same thing on all platforms. Programs written with the specific aim to fit well on smaller/bigger architectures should instead indicate this by using integer types with other wrap-around limits (we ought to add Int8, Int16 and Int64 as primitives). Using the machine-dependent WORD type when casting to and from pointers is a different thing -- this change doesn't affect the meaning of any Timber programs. -- Johan

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wrote: Some experiments have been made (although no code were checked in), and they mostly involved fixing rts.h. The underlying problem is,

On Sun, May 24, 2009 at 10:54 AM, Johan Nordlander

So it's essentially a matter of searching the source code for any such size dependencies, and perhaps also extended it with Int types of other common sizes. I can't foresee any deep technical difficulies, it's just tedious work.

You're welcome to give it a try!

-- Johan

I haven't looked too deeply into the source, but it would appear that the bulk of the 64-bit problems are relegated to rts.h. Is there any effort under way to address this? If not, I will take a whack at correcting it. If there is some experimental code out there, I'd be happy to test it on my 64 bit fedora machine.

-- We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them. - A. Einstein _______________________________________________ Timber mailing list Timber@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/timber

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-- We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them. - A. Einstein _______________________________________________ Timber mailing list Timber@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/timber