strangest systems I've sent email from

[Sean Conner]

It was thus said that the Great Mouse once stated:
> >>>   -spc (Wish the C standard committee had the balls to say "2's
> >>>   complement all the way, and a physical bit pattern of all 0s is a
> >>>   NULL pointer" ... )
> >> As far as I'm concerned, this is different only in degree from `Wish
> >> the C standard committee had the balls to say "Everything is x86".'.
> 
> > First off, can you supply a list of architectures that are NOT 2's
> > complement integer math that are still made and in active use today?
> 
> > Second, are there any architectures still commercially available and
> > used today where an all-zero bit pattern for an address *cannot* be
> > used as NULL?
> 
> What's the relevance?  You think the C spec should tie itself to the
> idiosyncracies of today's popular architectures?

  One more thing I forgot to mention:  Java integer ranges are 2's
complement, so it must assume 2's complement implementation.  I noticed that
Java is *also* available on the Unisys 2200, so either their implementation
of Java isn't quite kosher, or because the Unisys 2200 is emulated anyway,
they can "get by" with Java since the emulation of the Unisys is done on a
2's complement machine.

  -spc