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Re: Endianess
- To: mrs at wrs dot com (Mike Stump)
- Subject: Re: Endianess
- From: Toon Moene <toon at moene dot indiv dot nluug dot nl>
- Date: Thu, 13 Aug 98 20:35:02 +0200
- Cc: mikeg at watson dot ibm dot com, egcs at cygnus dot com
- Organization: Moene Computational Physics, Maartensdijk, The Netherlands
- References: <199808131554.IAA11875@kankakee.wrs.com>
> No! This is a FAQ, this is true, but it isn't a egcs
> FAQ. It is a how do I program in C FAQ. We don't
> maintain that FAQ. The reason why we cannot list (chouls
> not list) this in our FAQ, is then we must have all
> answers to all programming FAQs, including how to program
> in C, C++, Fortran, Ada, Objective-C, you get the point.
> The we must replicate all those preexisting FAQs into
> our, and replicate the work, and do a poor job of it,
> because we are as interested in maintaining it and so
> on...
Mike, I agree completely with you - the reason I tend to answer
these questions - irrespective if they're issued to fortran@gnu.org,
egcs-bugs@cygnus.com or comp.lang.fortran is that it probably took
the original questioner a lot of time to find out what was wrong.
By the time a Fortran programmer like Mr. zhumin finds out that the
actual problem he's experiencing is caused by an endianness
problem, he already has expended several hours of pointless
debugging and ploughing through manuals. I speak from experience,
and it's only because I have a hard-coded table in my head that sums
up the wrong-endian architectures (like Intel and Alpha) that I can
proceed with some speed in this business.
Yes, I wish I could keep this issues out of our mailing lists -
unfortunately, I don't know of a 100 % sure method.
Cheers,
Toon.