On 9/28/2021 5:14 AM, Toby Thain via cctalk wrote:
On 2021-09-27 11:46 p.m., ben via cctalk wrote:
POSIX requires a byte to be exactly 8 bits I read somewhere.
C99 C standard?
Great for ARM and INTEL, not so great for the 36 bit computers.
We've been through this before. No.
As I understand things, POSIX does require the existence of 8 bit bytes,
(int8_t and uint8_t) and requires them to be exactly 8 bits. It does
not AFAIK explicitly prohibit the existence of bytes with other sizes,
but who would bother?
The C standards are more liberal, and continue to require char types to
be 8 or more bits.
In principle then, char could still be 9 or more bits, but if int8_t is
required for a *NIX, who would do it? They'd just be making a
compatibility mess for themselves.
It's also unclear to me whether one's complement representation would be
allowed. (Various other representations would probably be prohibited by
other restrictions.)
Vince
