Re: size_t definition : Intel v Alpha (fwd)

Horst von Brand (vonbrand@inf.utfsm.cl)
Tue, 28 Sep 1999 09:16:47 -0400


"B. James Phillippe" <bryan@terran.org> said:

[...]

> It comes from the Linux kernel includes <asm/posix_types.h> and
> <linux/types.h>. Personally I think it's a mistake in the kernel
> definitions, to be different C data types across architectures. It's fine
> for the sizes of a native type to differ; if "long" is a different number
> of bytes or byte-order on some other architecture. But when the data types
> themselves are different in the headers, you have problems when using
> abstract data types (eg. size_t). Effectively it's like saying that foo()
> takes an int on x86 and a long on Alpha (or Sparc64, or PPC, or ...). IMO
> it would be most proper if size_t were defined as unsigned long on all
> architectures.

If it was that way, size_t as a type would be completely pointless, would it?

-- 
Dr. Horst H. von Brand                       mailto:vonbrand@inf.utfsm.cl
Departamento de Informatica                     Fono: +56 32 654431
Universidad Tecnica Federico Santa Maria              +56 32 654239
Casilla 110-V, Valparaiso, Chile                Fax:  +56 32 797513

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