Bill Long wrote:
...
> At the hardware level, the result is a 64 bit value in the result
> register specified in the instruction. For false, all the bits are
> 0. For true, the upper 63 bits are 0 and the low order bit is 1.
> Whether these are "INTEGER" or not is beside the point. That's a
> Fortran term, not a hardware term. But the bit patterns are
> identical to the representations of the integer values 0 and 1.
Well, as long as I don't have to know that to use the environment,
I don't care. If any part of the environment requires me to know
that, it's a broken environment. If, for example, the relational
operators are even permitted to be applied to the result of a
compare, it's a disaster waiting to happen.
--
J. Giles
"I conclude that there are two ways of constructing a software
design: One way is to make it so simple that there are obviously
no deficiencies and the other way is to make it so complicated
that there are no obvious deficiencies." -- C. A. R. Hoare
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