Joel C. Salomon wrote:
Walter Bright wrote:
Frits van Bommel wrote:
[1]: Hey, x86 technically has 6-byte pointers if you count segments
as part of the pointer (which would be mostly useless on currently
popular operating systems though).
It does, but I know of no compiler that supports that (C, C++, or any
other), and code that needs to deal with that tends to be assembler.
Shouldn’t most (ancient) 16-bit x86 compilers have support for “near”
and “far” pointers? Seems this should just require some updating of that
concept.
The 16 bit compilers (like Digital Mars C++ for DOS) do have such
support. Just not the 32 bit ones (which the 6 byte pointers would be).
It could be added to DMC for 32 bits, but there is no point to it
because there's no demand for it.
DMC++ still supports 16 bit targets, but frankly, about 1 person a year
gets it for that purpose. 16 bits is dead, dead, dead.
