From: already5chosen@yahoo.com   
      
   On Wed, 14 Jan 2026 22:19:34 -0500   
   James Kuyper  wrote:   
      
   > On 2026-01-14 04:03, Michael S wrote:   
   > > On Tue, 13 Jan 2026 21:24:16 -0500   
   > > "James Russell Kuyper Jr."  wrote:     
   > ...   
   > >> I'm quite positive that you would consider anything that might give   
   > >> unexpected behavior to such code to be "crazy". The simplest   
   > >> example I can think of is that unsigned int is big-endian, while   
   > >> unsigned long is little-endian, and I would even agree that such an   
   > >> implementation would be peculiar, but such an implementation could   
   > >> be fully conforming to the C standard.   
   > >>     
   > >   
   > > You are inventive!     
   >    
   > As a programmer, I paid close attention to what was and was not   
   > guaranteed about the software that I used. As a result, I've noticed   
   > many things, such as the fact that the standard imposes no   
   > requirements on the order of the bytes (or even of the bits) that are   
   > used to represent arithmetic values.   
   >   
      
   Luckily apart from requirements of the Standard, compilers, except for   
   toy/hobby ones, are constrained by need to have user. That places a   
   bounds on creativity of their authors.   
      
   > ...   
   > >> Which is precisely what's wrong about your approach - it relies   
   > >> upon intimate knowledge of the ABI. Specifically, it relies on   
   > >> unsigned int and unsigned long happening to have exactly the same   
   > >> size and representation.   
   > >>     
   > >   
   > > I consider the latter a basic knowledge of ABI rather than an   
   > > intimate. For me programming feels uncomfortable without such   
   > > knowledge. That is, I can manage without, but do not want to.   
   > > Your mileage appears to vary.     
   > I've spent most of my career working under rules that explicitly   
   > prohibited me from writing code that depends upon such details. As a   
   > result, I actually have relatively little knowledge of how any   
   > particular implementation of C that I used decided to handle issues   
   > that the C standard left unspecified. I've always written my code so   
   > that it would do what it's supposed to do, regardless of which   
   > choices any given implementation made about things that are   
   > unspecified.   
   >    
      
   I don't have a lot of 1st hand experience of porting code between   
   seriously diverse systems.   
   From the people that have such experience I always hear the same thing:   
   portability of program that was never actually ported is an illusion.   
   Fine details of sort that we discuss in this subthread are rather small   
   part of the reason behind it.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)