Machines for testing portability (was Re: "Numerical Recipes in C" is nonportable code)

[David Dyer-Bennet]

In article <673 at proxftl.UUCP> bill at proxftl.UUCP (T. William Wells) writes:
>In article <1673 at dataio.Data-IO.COM> bright at dataio.Data-IO.COM (Walter Bright) writes:
>: The best way to learn to write portable code is to be required to port
>: your applications to Vaxes, 68000s, and PCs. (I have all 3 on my desk!)
>
>We find that using 68000's (Suns and Macintoshes) and IBM-PC's
>(in the various memory models) is sufficient to catch most
>portability problems.
>
>Anybody else have suggestions on sets of systems for checking
>portability? 
  No portability check is complete until you've tried some word-oriented
rather than byte-oriented system.  Preferrably something with a word-size
not a multiple of 8 bits (like 60, or 36).  CDC, Unisys, Honeywell, and of
course the DEC PDP-10 series all come to mind.
  Also, while I haven't tried it personally, I remember a LONG string of
articles years ago in some group with the subject "Porting to PRIME seen
as a probable negative experience"; I seem to remember it has to do with
different types of pointers being of different sizes, none of which would
fit in in an int.



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