Terry Lambert <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> Thomas David Rivers wrote:
> >  Well - it's not counter-intuitive on many machines... For example,
> >  on the IBM mainframe - there is an instruction to load a character
> >  into a register - but not one that loads *and* sign-extends. So,
> >  you can get much better code if characters are unsigned by default.
> 
> Sounds like time to get out the wire wrap tools... and fix the
> hardware, not the software.

 Ha!  That may not be a bad idea :-)

> 
> >  So in our C/C++ compilers for the mainframe, the default is
> >  unsigned as well.
> > 
> >  I wonder if the AIX people were looking for mainframe
> >  compatibility in this decision, or was it motivated
> >  by the PowerPC instruction set?  Does anyone know what
> >  the Mac default is (since they are PowerPC based as well?)
> 
> RS/6000's didn't used to use PPC processors at all; so it's
> probably intentional software compatability.

 I'm confused then - the one we have here seems to.  There
 was a version of something very RS/6000-like that didn't,
 but I thought RS/6000s did...

        - Dave Rivers -

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