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- Path: oitnews.harvard.edu!cmcl2!schonberg!dewar
- From: dewar@cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar)
- Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada,comp.lang.c++,comp.lang.c,comp.lang.modula3,comp.lang.modula2
- Subject: Re: Hungarian notation - whoops!
- Date: 8 Feb 1996 10:38:35 -0500
- Organization: Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences
- Message-ID: <dewar.823793746@schonberg>
- References: <30C40F77.53B5@swsbbs.com> <Pine.HPP.3.91.960124153551.24374C-100000@zeezrom.cs.byu.edu> <4e7ifl$et3@goanna.cs.rmit.EDU.AU> <Pine.HPP.3.91.960129133429.8419C-100000@foggy.cs.byu.edu> <4em29qINN39r@keats.ugrad.cs.ubc.ca> <Pine.HPP.3.91.960201015336.17360C-100000@clear.cs.byu.edu> <4f41vf$g8j@goanna.cs.rmit.EDU.AU> <Pine.HPP.3.91.960205124102.18647E-100000@warm.cs.byu.edu> <4fc157$jsf@goanna.cs.rmit.EDU.AU>
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-
- Richard said:
-
- "(it was sign-and-magnitude; I still think having a negative number whose
- absolute value can't be represented is _silly_). That kind of mainframe
- is still made and still used and still appropriate.,"
-
- As far as I know, no current machine uses sign and magnitude representation
- for integer values, so I obviously have a gap in my knowledge. S&M
- representation is so hostile at a design level, that I thought everyone
- had abandoned it long ago (there is still an instance or two of 1's
- complement, but that of course is quite different). Richard, please
- enlighten.
-
- The comment about 2's complement being silly is a bit like saying you
- think that the use of binary is silly. The choice of 2's complement,
- like binary, is made for architectural reasons, not to be convenient
- for humans.
-
- By the way, S&M is of course the right representation of floating-point,
- using 2's complement for floating-point is a goof that only a designer
- not understanding fpt would make!
-
-