Re: New Book: The School of Niklaus Wirth

gdemont@my-deja.com schreibt:
>A subrange is a thing, the kind of animal containing the value is
>another.


IMO subranges with explicit bounds are the most portable kind of data types.
The lower bound indicates whether the value is signed or unsigned, and the
compiler can choose the best fitting data type for the requested precision.
Delphi internally describes all integral data types by subranges, including the
predefined data types.


It would be really helpful to the programmers, if every integral data type were
described by the according subrange. Then I had not to guess every time, how
many bytes a SmallInt or ShortInt has :-(


>A 0..255 subrange of a 32-bit type is not the same as a byte.


A subrange doesn't require or imply any base type.


Also "a 32-bit type" is not a very precise description, it might be signed or
unsigned. A "byte" also has no fixed number of bits, though it's usually
associated with 8 bits.


DoDi

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