UTF-8 library

Marcin 'Qrczak' Kowalczyk qrczak@knm.org.pl
Sat, 10 Aug 2002 08:43:13 +0000 (UTC)


Sat, 10 Aug 2002 01:31:51 -0700, Ashley Yakeley <ashley@semantic.org> pisze:

>>that different pointer
>>types have the same representation - we already rely on that, don't we?
> 
> No, we have separate Ptrs and FunctionPtrs IIRC...

Yes, but I mean the possibility that Ptr Word8 looks differently than
Ptr Word32.

> One of the things that really bothers me about C is the way its
> unspecifiedness about types can "infect" other languages. For
> instance, what exactly is a Haskell Int?

It's unrelated to C. Int must have at least 30 bits. It's reasonable
to make it 32 bits on IA-32 and 64 bits on IA-64. No need to exactly
specify its range because we have Integer and Int8/16/32/64 if needed,
and Int is the type appropriate for measuring array lengths for example
(we won't have gigabyte arrays in IA-32 but might have them on IA-64).

-- 
  __("<      Marcin Kowalczyk
  \__/     qrczak@knm.org.pl
   ^^    http://qrnik.knm.org.pl/~qrczak/