🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <45aanm$2s9@stork.qut.edu.au> John Gough,
gough@dstc.qut.edu.au writes:
>In essence we have a new type HUGEINT which is 64-bit and signed.  You

Why do we need a new type HUGEINT, when we could use LONGCARD, and
LONGINT.
That is what they are there for!  With the current GPM compilers the 
CARDINAL/INTEGER are the same size as the LONGCARD/LONGINT, but there
is no reason to maintain this, in fact there is every reason to honor
the original intent of LONG types.  This being support for higher
precision
types than supported by the machine word.  The current GPM machine
word is a 32-bit word (except for implementations on Alphas, and other
future machines).  The original GPM abitrarily decided to not support 
longer ordinal type.  Another problem with HUGEINT, is that there is no
support for HUGECARD (unsigned 64 bit word).

You need to update the <Types> interface to include Card64, and Int64.

We also need some portability interfaces.  The <Types> module is
a step in the right direction.  You need some method of determining 
the machines endian order, and byte swapping routines.

While you are adding things to the GPM interfaces consider adding
FileLength() to <UxFiles>, or a real SEEK function where I can position 
the mark at the EOF and then get the file offset of the EOF that way.
SetPos() does not suffice for this purpose.  

   eofPos := FileLength(f);

   oldPos := Seek(f, fromEnd, 0);
   eofPos := Seek(f, fromStart, oldPos);

One of the worst problems that I have with the GPM interfaces is that
the low level modules do not provide an interface to the OS.  I don't
care how dirty the OS interface is, it is the OS.  The high level library 
modules are supposed to hide the OS details from the casual programmer,
but when you want access to the OS, now I have to implement a non-standard
(not released with the compiler) interface module and link in the 
libc library.

....................................................................
: Peter "Eyes" Eiserloh
: None of the opinions expressed here are in any way related those 
: of my employer.
: Keywords: Linux, Modula-2, Compilers, Esperanto, Physics