[M3devel] what to do about file sizes being 32bits?

[Rodney M. Bates]

Well I don't agree that large files sizes are the only reason to have LONGINT.  They may be the
specific case where this community has seen significant need.  But I have a number of times
in the past (in various programming languages) needed multi-word arithmetic.  Moreover,
new use cases will happen.  Especially, we can expect the proliferation of embedded devices
to create then.  And I really believe it can be done without a lot of violence to the
Language..

Tony Hosking wrote:
> I am opposing LONGINT now (somewhat as a devil's advocate) because we introduced it simply to solve one very small problem: file sizes larger than INTEGER.  Perhaps we would have been better off sticking with a double-INTEGER record with lo/hi fields to represent file sizes?
> 
> Its introduction has added significant complication to the compiler, which I am frequently stumbling over (not to mention deep questions of typing in the language, as evidenced by the controversy over assignability between INTEGER and LONGINT).
> 
>