C++ proposal: There are exactly 8 bits in a byte

(www.open-std.org)

288 points Twirrim | 1 comments | 17 Oct 24 22:21 UTC | HN request time: 0.655s | source

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WalterBright ◴[18 Oct 24 00:33 UTC] No.41875254[source]▶

>>41874394 (OP) #

D made a great leap forward with the following:

1. bytes are 8 bits

2. shorts are 16 bits

3. ints are 32 bits

4. longs are 64 bits

5. arithmetic is 2's complement

6. IEEE floating point

and a big chunk of wasted time trying to abstract these away and getting it wrong anyway was saved. Millions of people cried out in relief!

Oh, and Unicode was the character set. Not EBCDIC, RADIX-50, etc.

replies(6): >>41875486 #>>41875539 #>>41875878 #>>41876632 #>>41878715 #>>41881672 #

cogman10 ◴[18 Oct 24 01:22 UTC] No.41875539[source]▶

>>41875254 #

Yeah, this is something Java got right as well. It got "unsigned" wrong, but it got standardizing primitive bits correct

byte = 8 bits

short = 16

int = 32

long = 64

float = 32 bit IEEE

double = 64 bit IEEE

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1. pjmlp ◴[18 Oct 24 08:38 UTC] No.41877440[source]▶

>>41875539 #

While I don't agree with not having unsigned as part of the primitive times, and look forward to Valhala fixing that, it was based on the experience most devs don't get unsigned arithmetic right.

"For me as a language designer, which I don't really count myself as these days, what "simple" really ended up meaning was could I expect J. Random Developer to hold the spec in his head. That definition says that, for instance, Java isn't -- and in fact a lot of these languages end up with a lot of corner cases, things that nobody really understands. Quiz any C developer about unsigned, and pretty soon you discover that almost no C developers actually understand what goes on with unsigned, what unsigned arithmetic is. Things like that made C complex. The language part of Java is, I think, pretty simple. The libraries you have to look up."

http://www.gotw.ca/publications/c_family_interview.htm

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