[M3devel] [Fwd: Re: A nonnative 64-bit language proposal]

[Rodney M. Bates]

Tony Hosking wrote:
> My LONGINT implementation addresses many of your concerns.  The  LONGINT 
> space is segregated from the INT space.  I want to come up  with an 
> implementation that also permits ordinals based on LONGINT in  addition 
> to the current system of ordinals based on INTEGER.  This  requires 
> revisiting the language spec and pushing through the  implications.  I'm 
> going to look at that briefly before moving on to  fixing user-level 
> threading for all targets.
> 

By "ordinals", do you mean enumerations?  Subranges?.  In the language
definition, ordinals refers to both the above, plus INTEGER, with CHAR and
BOOLEAN being enumerations.

It is hard to image a use for enumerations with more than 2^32 values.
As I recall, I was thinking this would add quite a bit of complexity to
the language for negligible benefit.

Subranges of LONGINT seem entirely useful and make for consistency.
 From a language definition standpoint, I think these just about fall
into place with very little change.

-- 
-------------------------------------------------------------
Rodney M. Bates, retired assistant professor
Dept. of Computer Science, Wichita State University
Wichita, KS 67260-0083
316-978-3922
rodney.bates at wichita.edu