On May 4, 2008, at 10:24 PM, andrey mirtchovski wrote:
Set for the next release: bit arrays.
"I'd use plan 9 before i'd use bitfields" -- pjw
I'm aware of that quote. The design of bit arrays will be totally
different from the design of bitfields. They are true arrays that can
be used in an implementation-independent manner. Given
b: 32 bits
b[0] := 4
the compiler will determine whether b[0] is at the far left or far
right of the binary version of that value. This means you can have
code, theoretically, like
function getlong: 32 bits
b: 32 bits
b[31..24] := getchar - '0'
b[23..16] := getchar - '0'
b[15..8] := getchar - '0'
b[7..0] := getchar - '0'
return b
and then use getlong as follows:
x: 32 bits = getlong
if x = 400 then
{ ... }
This is a severe blow to bit fields.
No, I'm not doing a school assignment. This is more of a hobby project.
