The x86 architecture is the weirdo, part 2

Re:The x86 architecture is the weirdo, part 2 by gumby on Friday April 22, 2022 @08:28PM (#31130005)

Yet all these languages were limited to the 8-bit byte. C on the PDP-10 and -20 only had an 8-bit byte while all other languages on those machines Al had native access to bytes of width 1-36 bits — yes, std::vector<bool> in hardware, but more powerful.

Though a general purpose machine it had instructions specifically designed for low cost Lisp implementation, arbitrary numbers of stacks etc…all inaccessible to C

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:The x86 architecture is the weirdo, part 2 by brucehoult on Friday April 22, 2022 @11:26PM (#31131088)

There is no requirement in C for char to be 8 bits. Even in modern C it's allowed to be bigger than that. For sure it is a bit limiting that in C everything else has to be a multiple (possibly x1) of the size of char. Other languages don't have that restriction.

Algol68 allowed char to be as small as 6 bits, the size on the ICL 1900 it was first developed on (with a 24 bit word size).

Pascal was first implemented on the CDC 6600, with 60 bit words and characters again 6 bits. The first other machine Pascal was ported to was, again, the ICL 1900.

[ Parent | on HN ]