boolean datatype

[Peter Ludemann]

In article <399 at peregrine.UUCP> mike at peregrine.UUCP (Mike Wexler) writes:
>In article <705 at wjvax.wjvax.UUCP> brett at wjvax.UUCP (Brett Galloway) writes:
>>In article <393 at peregrine.UUCP> mike at peregrine.UUCP (Mike Wexler) writes:

>>I would prefer an operator that merely generated an integral type based on
>>a number of bits requested, not based on a desired range.  For example,
>>on a machine with 8-bit char, 16-bit short, 32-bit int, and 64-bit long,
>>bittype(8) == char; bittype(9) == short; bittype(31) == int; and so on.
>
>It also puts the burden on the user to figure out how many bits are needed
>to store a particular number.  This could lead to either less efficient code
>or nonportable code due to problems with signed/unsigned variables.  

WSL (Waterloo Systems Language) has what you want.  It's basically a 
tidied up version of C.  The syntax is like Pascal, but no range 
checking is actually done.  So "i:1..10" would be C's "char i"; while 
"i:0..1000" would be C's "unsigned short int i".  

A commercial data centre evalutated WSL and probably would have used 
it except for the detail that there existed no WSL->C and C->WSL 
translators.  But the implementation looked quite good.  For more 
info, contact WatSoft at the University of Waterloo, Waterloo, 
Ontario, Canada.  (The book is available separately.)