C needs BCD (ANSI People: Please Listen)

Ron Natalie <ron> ron at brl-tgr.ARPA
Tue Oct 23 02:47:31 AEST 1984


Give me a break.  MARS NEEDS WOMEN, TOO!

The mode for adding random extensions to the languages that are of
interest to a small number of implementations or machines is to make
them look like functions.  This is OK, even if they aren't implemented
as functions.  I.e.

	a = bcdadd(b, 10);

Could produce equally good code as
	a = b bcdaddopt 10;

If bcdadd was recognized by the compiler/loader and switched to inline
code.  We do exactly that for the memory synchronization primitives on
the HEP C compiler.  It allows new things to be added without breaking
the syntax of the language.

If you want the other case, use ada.

-Ron

Let's keep C, C.



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