[Default] On 16 Jun 2017 11:18:42 -0700, in bit.listserv.ibm-main [email protected] (Jesse 1 Robinson) wrote:
>TGIF. With due respect to the view that Indian (Hindi? Sanskrit?) via Arabic >numerals were the progenitor of our modern big-endian bias, I'd like to point >out that Roman numerals--remember them you old dudes?--are apparently >big-endian. Lord knows who invented that convoluted system, but it persisted >in academia and in commerce for centuries. As I recall 9 is IX not VIIII and 90 is XC not LXXXX. Is anyone energetic enough to verify this. I am not tonight. Clark Morris > >Friday off topic. I read somewhere that at the time of American independence >circa 1776, it was de rigueur for an educated person to be able to do >*arithmetic* in Roman numerals. You could not otherwise claim to be properly >schooled. A footnote on the whimsy of stodgy education standards. > >. >. >J.O.Skip Robinson >Southern California Edison Company >Electric Dragon Team Paddler >SHARE MVS Program Co-Manager >323-715-0595 Mobile >626-543-6132 Office ?=== NEW >[email protected] > > >-----Original Message----- >From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:[email protected]] On >Behalf Of Paul Gilmartin >Sent: Friday, June 16, 2017 10:56 AM >To: [email protected] >Subject: (External):Re: RFE? xlc compile option for C integers to be "Intel >compat" or Little-Endian > >On Fri, 16 Jun 2017 16:43:38 +0100, David W Noon wrote: >>... >>This is not the way computers do arithmetic. Adding, subtracting, etc., >>are performed in register-sized chunks (except packed decimal) and the >>valid sizes of those registers is determined by architecture. >> >I suspect programmed decimal arithmetic was a major motivation for >little-endian. > >>In fact, on little-endian systems the numbers are put into big-endian >>order when loaded into a register. Consequently, these machines do >>arithmetic in big-endian. >> >Ummm... really? I believe IBM computers number bits in a register with >0 being the most significant bit; non-IBM computers with 0 being the least >sighificant bit. I'd call that a bitwise little-endian. And it gives an easy >summation formula for conversion to unsigned integers. > >>As someone who was programming DEC PDP-11s more than 40 years ago, I >>can assure everybody that little-endian sucks. >> >But do the computers care? (And which was your first system? Did you feel >profound relief when you discovered the alternative convention?) > >IIRC, PDP-11 provided for writing tapes little-endian, which was wrong for >sharing numeric data with IBM systems, or big-endian, which was wrong for >sharing text data. > >For those who remain unaware on a Friday: > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lilliput_and_Blefuscu#History_and_politics > >-- gil > > >---------------------------------------------------------------------- >For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, >send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
