From: cross@spitfire.i.gajendra.net   
      
   In article <108tbk2$29q30$2@dont-email.me>,   
   Arne Vajhøj   wrote:   
   >On 8/29/2025 5:38 PM, Dan Cross wrote:   
   >> In article <108t0d4$249vm$11@dont-email.me>,   
   >> Arne Vajhøj   wrote:   
   >>> On 8/29/2025 9:17 AM, Dan Cross wrote:   
   >>>> In article <108g8kk$33isk$1@dont-email.me>,   
   >>>> Arne Vajhøj   wrote:   
   >>>>> Delphi provide both flavors. shortint/smallint/integer   
   >>>>> and int8/int16/int32, byte/word/cardinal and   
   >>>>> uint8/uint16/uint32. I believe the first are the most   
   >>>>> widely used.   
   >>>>   
   >>>> The older names feel like they're very much looking backwards in   
   >>>> time.   
   >>>   
   >>> Developers tend to like what they know.   
   >>>   
   >>>>> (64 bit is just int64 and uint64, because somehow they   
   >>>>> fucked up longint and made it 32 bit on 32 bit and 64 bit   
   >>>>> Windows but 64 bit on 64 bit *nix)   
   >>>>   
   >>>> I'd blame C for that.   
   >>>   
   >>> Delphi is not C.   
   >>   
   >> Obviously.   
   >>   
   >> But it would be foolish to assume that they weren't influenced   
   >> by matters of compatibility with C (or more specifically C++)   
   >> here, particularly given the history of Delphi as a language.   
   >>   
   >> Even the name gives it away ("longint").   
   >   
   >That was also Lawrence's guess.   
      
   I plonked that guy ages ago, so I don't see his responses.  I   
   expect he knows even less about Delphi than   
      
   >But the hypothesis that they wanted to follow   
   >C/C++ is obviously not true.   
      
   You'll need to qualify that statement more before its veracity   
   is even within reach of being ascertained.   
      
   Obviously they were not following C and C++ in the sense that   
   the syntax (and much of the semantics) are based on Pascal, not   
   C.  Clearly they wanted things like fundamental integral types   
   to line up with existing C code for calls across an FFI   
   boundary.  One merely need look up the history of the language   
   to see that.   
      
   And of course these things evolved over time.  Wirth's own   
   languages after Pascal exhibited semantics more closely   
   resembling those of C than Pascal.  For instance, arrays in   
   Oberon do not retain their size as a fundamental aspect of their   
   type, one of the big complaints from Kernighan's famous critique   
   of Pascal:   
   http://doc.cat-v.org/bell_labs/why_pascal/why_pascal_is_not_my_f   
   vorite_language.pdf   
      
   This is arguably a bug in both Oberon and C, but no one had   
   really discovered how to put slices a la Fortran into a systems   
   language at the level of C or Oberon yet; possibly because they   
   were tainted by APL and ALGOL 68.   
      
   	- Dan C.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)