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Re: Queston about the word

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Ben Bacarisse <ben.usenet@bsb.me.uk> wrote:

> Mateusz_madi <madi.czadi@gmail.com> writes:
> 
> > what is the word in computer memmory?
> 
> In my opinion, the term has stopped being useful.

That's patently untrue if you write assembly code. See how far you get if
you don't know exactly how big a word is on your target machine.

> 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.

It's meaningful on one platform. Across platforms it's not. So what?

Are you implying the IBM 360 could only address storage in units of
halfwords, words, doublewords, etc? That is not true. Everything on the
IBM 360 was byte addressable just like it is today. Or did you just mean
that the IBM 360 used archaic terms? That's also false, since those terms
have direct impact on numbering and instruction formats and alignment now in
the year 2011. 

And guess what else? 50 years later the naming conventions for words,
halfwords, doublewords etc. on IBM equipment remain unchanged and in common
use.

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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

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