Article View: comp.std.c
Article #4606Re: int's and zero
From: Peter Curran
Date: Wed, 10 Jan 1996 15:14
Date: Wed, 10 Jan 1996 15:14
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1294 bytes
On 9 Jan 1996 18:09:46 GMT in article <4cub1a$jbl@alterdial.UU.NET>
rex@aussie.com (rex@aussie.com) wrote:
>There was considerable debate about whether or not integers could be stored
>as BCD, Grey code, or some such, but in the end, we decided that they had to
>be stored as binary numbers. And, of course, 2's comp, 1's comp, and signed
>magnitude all use all-bits-zero for zero. The only thing that could cause a
>problem is for machines/compilers with signed zeros; I think that negative
>zero might have some other bit pattern.
I don't think this is the full story. The *used* bits have to be zero.
However, there has been agreement that the integers can have "holes" (unused
bits), and those bits could be required to be non-zero in some architectures, I
would think.
--
Peter Curran pcurran@inforamp.net
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Path: arc1-ca.pugleaf.net!inforamp.net!usenet From: pcurran@inforamp.net (Peter Curran) Newsgroups: comp.std.c Subject: Re: int's and zero Date: Wed, 10 Jan 1996 15:14:53 GMT Organization: PSC Enterprises Message-ID: <4d0kd3$d8l@sam.inforamp.net> References: <4cth4e$4q@odin.funcom.no> <4cub1a$jbl@alterdial.UU.NET> Reply-To: pcurran@inforamp.net NNTP-Posting-Host: ts13-15.tor.inforamp.net X-Newsreader: Forte Free Agent 1.0.82