Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!rutgers!cmcl2!brl-adm!umd5!uvaarpa!virginia!babbage!mac3n
From: mac3n@babbage.acc.virginia.edu (Alex Colvin)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: C machine
Message-ID: <133@babbage.acc.virginia.edu>
Date: 16 Dec 87 19:50:05 GMT
References: <7535@alice.UUCP>
Organization: University of Virginia
Lines: 19

Autoincrement & decrement are probably in C for the same reason they are
in the 11 (& 10 & 8 & GE635 &c.).  They're useful.

I find myself beating on iNtel instructions these days, and have noticed
several things not amenable to C.

	several widths of registers.  this means that the implicit
	widening of char to int actually generates code.  ditto
	float to double.

	nonlinear addressing.  this means that arithmetic on pointers
	is dangerous.  particularly equality.  however, most
	reasonable uses work OK.

On the DPS8 (descendant of GE635) I note that C also assumes byte
addressability and not bit addressability.  You'll see this on most
new designs.

Finally, I like to think of C as the apotheosis of Algol 68.