[M3devel] Oops, forgot to ask

[Peter Eiserloh]

Hi Gang,

0 - CARDINALs are an integral type defined by the language
spec to be from 0 (zero) to MAXINT (not MAXCARD).  Recently,
a change was made to CM3 to extend the language it recognizes
beyond the original language spec (SPWM3), now CM3 understands
a LONGINT.  

Was there a corresponding LONGCARD defined?
Can is use all 64-bits, or is it restricted to 63, like
the CARDINAL is only 31-bits.


1 - How does one write a WIDECHAR literal?  Are WIDECHAR
currently only 16-bits?  If so they are limited to only 
the basic multilingual plane (BMP).  Unicode characters 
are 20-bits, which is why encodings such as USC-32 exist.
If a WIDECHAR is only 16-bits, are they encoded as UTF-16,
which is a similar scheme to UTF-8?  If they are currently
only 16-bits, are there plans to expand it to fully support 
unicode character encodings?


2 - Recently there was discussion about creating a new type, 
that is halfway a REFANY, and halfway a value itself.  I 
myself dislike unions, and fortran equivalences, and any 
other aliasing techniques, but if the compiler supports it, 
we should document it.

What was it finally called?
How does one declare an item of this type?
How does one use it?





+--------------------------------------------------------+
| Peter P. Eiserloh                                      |
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