altivec questions

[Janis Johnson <janis187 at us dot ibm dot com>]

Some AltiVec observations and questions:

1. vector bool

   The documentation says "The bool type is deprecated and will be
   discontinued in future revisions.  Use vector signed instead."
   Recently, though, Zem added lots of support for vector bool and
   except for some apparent oversights it appears to be fully supported
   now, along with vector pixel.

2. vector long types

   Use of "vector signed long" and "vector unsigned long" isn't
   documented, but GCC gives "warning: use of 'long' in AltiVec types
   is deprecated; use 'int'".  These ought to be hard errors for -m64,
   right?

3. pointers to long and unsigned long

   Several tests pass 'long *' or 'unsigned long *' in places where the
   Motorola AltiVec PIM does not include those types among the
   acceptable arguments.  GCC doesn't complain for either -m32 or -m64.
   These ought to be errors for -m64, right?  Should GCC's altivec.h
   support the ones that are used in the gcc.dg/vmx tests?

I've gone through the Motorola AltiVec PIM and altivec.h comparing the
generic and specific AltiVec operations with the C++ functions and the
C macros.  I'm sure these matched up when Aldy was finished, but there
are a lot of inconsistencies since the addition of support for vector
bool and vector pixel.  I'm testing a big patch to altivec.h that makes
everything match again, and I'll have a patch to extend.texi to make the
documentation match what's supported in altivec.h.  Before I submit
these I'd like to clear up the questions above and make sure I'm
understanding this stuff correctly.

Janis