Groups | Search | Server Info | Keyboard shortcuts | Login | Register [http] [https] [nntp] [nntps]

Groups > comp.unix.programmer > #858

Re: Queston about the word

Show all headers | View raw

Ben Bacarisse <ben.usenet@bsb.me.uk> writes:
> Mateusz_madi <madi.czadi@gmail.com> writes:
>> what is the word in computer memmory?
>
> In my opinion, the term has stopped being useful.  There used to
> word-addressed machines where storage was made up of chunks larger that
> were larger than you'd use for a character.  In a machine like that, the
> term has a well-defined meaning.  When byte addressing became the norm,
> many systems kept the term.  For example, the IBM 360 had half words,
> words and double words but it's getting less and less clear what the
> undecorated term "word" should really mean.

The usual meaning would be 'an integer whose width is equal to the
width of the general-purpose integer registers of the machine'. 

[...]

> I think that in some communities (e.g. C programmers working on Windows)
> there might be a well-established meaning, but it won't necessarily
> apply to any other group of people.

In the community of people who can't get their head out of DOS, a
'word' is a sixteen bit integer, independent of any properties of the
hardware they are using because the word size of the CPUs the
programming documentation they picked up them term from referred to
was 16 bits (the Intel 8086, to be precise).

But Windows programmers are not supposed to communicate with anyone
who isn't because this makes them sligtly easier to control.

Back to comp.unix.programmer | Previous | Next — Previous in thread | Next in thread | Find similar | Unroll thread

Thread

Queston about the word Mateusz_madi <madi.czadi@gmail.com> - 2011-06-23 04:09 -0700
  Re: Queston about the word Ben Bacarisse <ben.usenet@bsb.me.uk> - 2011-06-23 13:59 +0100
    Re: Queston about the word Rainer Weikusat <rweikusat@mssgmbh.com> - 2011-06-23 14:16 +0100
      Re: Queston about the word Nobody <nobody@nowhere.com> - 2011-06-23 18:21 +0100
      Re: Queston about the word scott@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) - 2011-06-24 00:43 +0000
    Re: Queston about the word Casper H.S. Dik <Casper.Dik@OrSPaMcle.COM> - 2011-06-23 13:29 +0000
    Re: Queston about the word Nomen Nescio <nobody@dizum.com> - 2011-06-24 04:56 +0200
      Re: Queston about the word Ben Bacarisse <ben.usenet@bsb.me.uk> - 2011-06-24 17:29 +0100

csiph-web