Date: Tue, 17 Feb 2015 16:57:07 -0500 From: John Baldwin <jhb@freebsd.org> To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Cc: Brandon Allbery <allbery.b@gmail.com>, kpneal@pobox.com Subject: Re: top, fixed buffer length in utils.c Message-ID: <201502171657.07538.jhb@freebsd.org> In-Reply-To: <CAKFCL4UA8fz1oinOPB89dGQtP=TjuthhWka9efeo0mgnS6aNZA@mail.gmail.com> References: <20150201175159.7fa88d16@B85M-HD3-0.alogt.com> <20150216035636.GA80472@neutralgood.org> <CAKFCL4UA8fz1oinOPB89dGQtP=TjuthhWka9efeo0mgnS6aNZA@mail.gmail.com>
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On Sunday, February 15, 2015 11:18:54 pm Brandon Allbery wrote: > On Sun, Feb 15, 2015 at 10:56 PM, <kpneal@pobox.com> wrote: > > > There > > will _never_ be a compiler of anything resembling popularity for any > > established FreeBSD host that has int as anything other than 32 bits in > > size. > > > > This is optimistic beyond sanity, based on history. I was making a point as > well.... Really. People claimed this in the 16-bit days, because the idea > of something using 32 bits was obviously going to break things and be too > difficult to cope with. So where are we now? > > There will be 64-bit CPUs, as opposed to 32-bit CPUs with 64-bit > extensions, in the future. Be certain of this. (Heck, there's already been > one, albeit not popular: DEC Alpha.) And eventually (unlike the Alpha) the > native word size will be used as the default word size because people --- > specifically, developers --- will want that. Which means (int) will change. > > The only constant in the world is change. You can choose to change with it, > or to pretend that it doesn't/didn't happen. The latter just means you'll > be left in the dust wondering why the world isn't paying any attention to > you any more. I'm not advocating that ints will forever be 64-bits, but I think it will probably be quite a while. If anything, the trend on 64-bit platforms is the opposite due to 64-bits being too wasteful for longs and pointers (see x32 for x86 and mipsn32). -- John Baldwin
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