Structured Fortran - was Re: Self modifying code, lambda calculus

On 9/23/2015 9:10 AM, Mouse wrote: An int just has to be able to store numbers of a certain magnitude. Same with long. You do have to be able to convert between longs (and possibly ints) and addresses (*). So, you make an int 5 digits (which matches the natural length of addresses) and longs something like 10 digits. You don't have to simulate anything, near as I can tell. Then the length of an int is 5 and a long is 10 (instead of the more typical 2 and 4). I think what you are referring to by stating anything can be copied using char-based types is (void) * - "I don't know what this points to". But using (void) to copy things will work fine, so long as they are actually compatible in length and type - which is true of most any C implementation. One interesting design decision would be whether or not to try and exploit the whole wordmark part of the architecture in native code when doing assignments or comparisons of like types, as opposed to some kind of threaded code implementation, and not bothering with wordmarks at all. A case could be made for either approach. (The PDP-11 DOS FORTRAN largely generated threaded code, BTW). And, naturally, one would have to do some kind of stack emulation. It might not be ANSI C (any more than FORTRAN II is FORTRAN IV or BDS C was ANSI C), but one could certainly come up with a decent, useful C for such a machine. JRJ