HOST_WIDE_INT vs HOST_WIDEST_INT (was Re: x-files must die: rather too much at once)

[Zack Weinberg]

On Sat, Mar 10, 2001 at 08:45:07AM -0500, Kaveh R. Ghazi wrote:
>  > Why do we have both HOST_WIDE_INT and HOST_WIDEST_INT?  It's rather
>  > confusing.  This patch may use a different definition for
>  > HOST_WIDE_INT than the previous, in certain corner cases; if I
>  > understand the semantics correctly - and I'm not saying I do - the
>  > old behavior was in error.
> 
> I was told HOST_WIDE_INT must never be wider than long for performance
> reasons.  IIRC, at the time Jeff quoted some horrible slowdown figure
> when he tested setting HOST_WIDE_INT to long long.
> 
> So to allow correct 64 bit handling in cpp, we decided to introduce
> HOST_WIDEST_INT .  It will be "long long" if plain "long" isn't wide
> enough.

Thought it was something like that.

Maybe we should call them "long" and "intmax_t", then?  
If sizeof(long) == sizeof(int), we presently make HOST_WIDE_INT be
int, but we could just use long all the time.  That'd make a whole
bunch of junk disappear...

zw