Re: [Distutils] [Python-3000] sizeof(size_t) sizeof(long)
Greg Ewing wrote: When you go into a computer store and ask for 256MB of RAM, you don't expect to be asked What size bytes would that be, then, sir? I ask for 256 Mo, Mo for Mega-octet: French (and most non English languages I am aware of) does not have this ambiguity :) And anyway, in a computer store, you find memory for personal computers, where one byte always has 8 bits. So it's a de facto standard, and one that works perfectly well. Going against it is both futile and unnecessary, as far as I can see. Going against the C standard seems pretty futile to me. cheers, David ___ Distutils-SIG maillist - Distutils-SIG@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/distutils-sig
Re: [Distutils] [Python-3000] sizeof(size_t) sizeof(long)
David Cournapeau wrote: I ask for 256 Mo, Mo for Mega-octet: French (and most non English languages I am aware of) does not have this ambiguity :) But would you ask for it that way in an English-speaking country? Would they have a clue what you were talking about? Anyway, I don't think it really is an ambiguity in practice -- only in the minds of those that have too much time to read standards documents. And anyway, in a computer store, you find memory for personal computers, where one byte always has 8 bits. Does it? Or... Going against the C standard seems pretty futile to me. Hmmm. So as long as I program my computer in C, it has 8 bit bytes... or at least a C implementation with 8-bit chars. But if I use a special Unicode-C with 16-bit chars, I've then got half as many bytes of memory as I had before... So I have to tell the guy in the computer shop what programming language and implementation I'm using, too! :-) Seems to me that disregarding this particular quirk of the C standard is a lesser evil than confusing everybody by changing the meaning of byte all the time. [In attempt to pull this very slightly closer to being on-topic... what does this imply for the Python bytes type? Are they always 8-bit bytes, or are they whatever size your C compiler thinks bytes are? Do the Python docs need to clarify this?] -- Greg ___ Distutils-SIG maillist - Distutils-SIG@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/distutils-sig
