Re: Any use for Branch if Even/Odd ?

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Article #10932

#10932

From: Andy Freeman
Date: Mon, 14 Dec 1992 20:36

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In article <id.08RV.WYB@ferranti.com> peter@ferranti.com (peter da silva) writes:
>Close. As I recall, DEC is very fond of using even/odd for true/false values,
>and the VMS interface definition has a lot of even/odd status returns, so it's
>likely these instructions are to make it run VMS real good.

Does anyone know why they preferred even/odd to >=0/<0?  Sometimes one
has to test the sign bit, so why not use it whenever one can use any
bit to split things into two classes?

-andy
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Newsgroups: comp.arch
Path: arc1-ca.pugleaf.net!sparky!uunet!stanford.edu!CSD-NewsHost.Stanford.EDU!SAIL.Stanford.EDU!andy
From: andy@SAIL.Stanford.EDU (Andy Freeman)
Subject: Re: Any use for Branch if Even/Odd ?
Message-ID: <1992Dec14.203631.16388@CSD-NewsHost.Stanford.EDU>
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Organization: Computer Science Department,  Stanford University.
References: <endecotp.723992157@cs.man.ac.uk> <Bz2MMK.GIL@world.std.com> <id.08RV.WYB@ferranti.com>
Date: Mon, 14 Dec 1992 20:36:31 GMT
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