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From: gwyn@brl-smoke.ARPA (Doug Gwyn )
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: NULL, zero, and readable code
Message-ID: <6104@brl-smoke.ARPA>
Date: Sun, 12-Jul-87 15:48:37 EDT
Article-I.D.: brl-smok.6104
Posted: Sun Jul 12 15:48:37 1987
Date-Received: Mon, 13-Jul-87 04:49:32 EDT
References: <8170@brl-adm.ARPA> <13222@topaz.rutgers.edu> <6090@brl-smoke.ARPA> <266@swlabs.UUCP>
Reply-To: gwyn@brl.arpa (Doug Gwyn (VLD/VMB) )
Organization: Ballistic Research Lab (BRL), APG, MD.
Lines: 10

In article <266@swlabs.UUCP> jack@swlabs.UUCP (Jack Bonn) writes:
>I don't know whether ALL machines will leave a -0 result.  But I know
>that the CDC 6400 (and family) did.

I wonder about this.  The CDC 1700, a 16-bit 1's complement machine using
the same cordwood modules as the larger CDCs (which means the same bit-slice
arithmetic modules), definitely did NOT produce -0 in normal arithmetic
unless one introduced a -0 as an operand.  That's why I was surprised when
I first heard people saying that -0 was a problem; I never had any trouble
with it in two years of CDC 1700 programming.