🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <140@ima.UUCP> johnl@ima.UUCP (John R. Levine) writes:
>>> ... and if you ever plan on writing programs for the i80286, don't
>>> "normalize" pointers.

>>So how will one compare pointers?  If you can't normalize them, two pointers
>>could reference the same address, but not contain the same values. ...

>Not likely.  The 286 is a genuine segmented architecture (as opposed to the
>8086 which is an unsatisfactory approximation.)  The operating system
>controls where each segment is mapped.  Unless you have a strange
>operating system, you can assume that the contents of different segments are
>disjoint, so that if two pointers point into different segments, they're not
>pointing at the same thing.

Ummm, if you ask DOS to allocate memory for you, it returns a *segment* 
address, and you are to assume zero offset (see DOS function calls 48 and
49).  Now, unless you are allocating in 64K-sized chunks, the segments
won't likely be disjoint.  I am no great fan of DOS, but I'm not sure I'd
call it *strange* in net.micro.pc...

--
\tom haapanen					looking glass software ltd.
syncro@looking.UUCP				waterloo, ontario, canada
watmath!looking!syncro				(519) 884-7473

"These opinions are solely mine, although even I would like to deny them..."