On 3/20/2017 20:58, Paul Gilmartin wrote:
Please don't reply with "Subject:...Digest..."
Sorry... I wish I remembered to do that, but I usually don't.
On 2017-03-20, at 17:45, Steve Smith wrote:
Two's-complement is an amazingly great way for binary computers to store
negative numbers. It is not so great for humans to read or write. First
of all, you have to know where the sign bit is, and X expressions are
ambiguous. If you watch carefully, you'll see that HLASM (almost) always
left-fills to 32 bits (with 0s), so if you intend to specify -1, then you
must write X'FFFFFFFF'.
Why not just write -1?
I would. You could. This was for those who really, really, want to
pound the square peg into the round hole.
It would have been nice if different conventions were chosen back in the
dark ages, instead of conflating X strings with hex numbers. But it isn't
nice, and you might as well learn how it works, and learn to live with it.
The consequences of that have pervaded this thread.
Sure, and there's value in discussing them. But for generating RFEs and
requirements, it's appropriate (it's necessary) to consider the costs as
well as the benefits. My take (and implication) is that the costs
vastly outweigh the benefits.
-- gil
sas
