Re: sick and fucking tired of this Y2k shit

[Sunder <sunder@brainlink.com>]

mgraffam@idsi.net wrote:
> 
> You've obviously never used COBOL, which, by the way, is exactly what most
> of the older code is in. I've never used COBOL. No, really, I haven't..
> I plead the 5th, the 5th I say!

I had the unfortunate pleasure -- I was feeling masochistic at the time.  That
feeling has long since left.  I didn't use it long enough to realize the types
of storage, nor at the time did I much care to find out what evil lurked
beneath its hood.
 
> There is a lot of good code by good, thoughtful programmers that isn't
> 64-bit clean.. I have to hack the code to get it to compile on my Alpha.
> They are using C's data types, albeit unconventionally, in an attempt
> at efficiency and ease.

Yes, I've noticed that.  What I usually do is put #define's at the top of
every .C and .H file (with #ifdefs' to make sure the compiler doesn't barf
over the redefinitions) with types that match those of a 32 bit machine
similar enough.  Works fine on my Alpha. :)  I've got OpenBSD on mine. What OS
do you run on yours?
 
> When the Merced comes out, we'll see of a bunch of people running around
> trying to fix 32-bit programming for a 64-bit world.. its the same
> sort of thing, really.

Not quite the same problem as it's fairly easy to redefine int's and chars and
long ints to match a 64 bit platform.  You don't have to rewrite the code,
just modify the top of the files. When Sun introduced the Ultra's code didn't
break -- this is because they introduced new data types "long long" I believe.
:)

Of course if you've got endian issues on top of that, it's a bit harder.

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