Micropolis

[Roy J. Tellason]

On Monday 19 November 2007 20:54, Fred Cisin wrote:
> > > The 2GB limit was due to MICROS~1 using a signed, rather than unsigned,
> > > long integer.  'Course that did make it possible to have a file with
> > > -2147483648 bytes :-)
>
> On Mon, 19 Nov 2007, Roy J. Tellason wrote:
> > Having bumped into that limit at times,  it made next to zero sense to me
> > that some programmer couldn't take the trouble to type "unsigned" in
> > front of "int" for that particular bit of code...
> > Grr!
>
> 1) "That number (2147483647) is soo big that nobody would ever need more
> than that!"

That sorta reminds me of a fairly well-known quote about 640K...

> 2) Some of the earlier compilers didn't have an "unsigned long int"

Broken tools are still broken.

> 3) What happens if you copy a -2G file to an otherwise almost full disk?

Beats me.

-- 
Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and
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Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James 
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