INGRES for 68Ks (Pixel 100)

mogul%Shasta%su-score at sri-unix.UUCP mogul%Shasta%su-score at sri-unix.UUCP
Fri Aug 26 04:49:00 AEST 1983


From:  Jeff Mogul <mogul%Shasta at su-score>

I've ported many a program between Vaxen and 68000s.  There are things
that people usually ignore when writing code that screw up such ports:
	(1) Vaxen/PDP11s use a different byte-ordering from 68ks.  This
shows up almost every time strong typing is violated, especially
with casts and unions.
	(2) If you pass the address of a long or a short to a routine that
expects the address of a short or a byte, resp., the "right" thing MIGHT
happen on VAX/PDP-11, but probably not on a 68k.
	(3) Similarly, depending on your compiler you might have to
be more careful about getting the return-type declaration right for functions.
	(4) Code which deals with external representations, such as disk
files or network packets, has to face the byte-order problem square in the
face.

-Jeff



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