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Re: [DotGNU]Endianness?
From: |
Rhys Weatherley |
Subject: |
Re: [DotGNU]Endianness? |
Date: |
Mon, 10 Nov 2003 06:20:48 +1000 |
User-agent: |
KMail/1.4.3 |
On Sunday 09 November 2003 08:23 pm, Fergus Henderson wrote:
> Does Microsoft's C/C++ compiler actually generate code which _requires_
> that the CLR's run-time data representation be little-endian?
Global variables are laid out in .data sections, as if they were flat byte
arrays, and there is insufficient type information to determine what the
original contents were to byte-swap or re-align.
> Or does it just generate code whose behaviour might be different
> if run on a system with different endianness?
I'm not talking about quirks here. I'm talking about the wrong values being
read from memory locations, or bus errors due to misaligned accesses (where
struct alignment differs between platforms).
> If the latter, why would you consider it bad for a C/C++ compiler
> to generate code whose behaviour may depend on the enddianess of the
> target system?
If the resulting binary won't run on multiple platforms, it kind of defeats
the purpose of having a cross-platform bytecode format, no? Remember, the
name of my project is "Portable".NET. I consider non-portable design to be
bad by definition.
Now, of course, a programmer can write non-portable C code on top of a
portable engine just by being sloppy. But my main objection is this: if I
write portable C, using all the usual conventions for avoiding
platform-specific behaviour, the resulting IL should run everywhere. But
with Microsoft's compiler, it won't.
Cheers,
Rhys.