Re: Library files not in their proper distribution?

[Mario Becroft <mb@tos.pl.net>]

On Sun, 12 Apr 1998, Katherine L Ellis wrote:

> Also question, How come a lot of soft IF compiled with 32bit interger
> don't work? why is mshort needed at all to make a soft to work? I
> thought it was to be more effective. Any answer about that?

The -mshort option simply means that integer data type will be 16 bit
instead of the usual 32 bit. It's got nothing to do with making things
more effective (although it may have some effect on performance, this is
not the primary function of the option, such effects would just be a side
effect of the different integer size).

Some software could be made in such a way that it would work only with
integers sized 16 bits, or only with 32 bits. It's possible to write
software that would fail on both of these and require 64 bit integers,
for example.

It's better to write software that works with integers of various sizes,
but obviously you hit on a program that isn't designed that way.

-- 
Mario Becroft                        Auckland, New Zealand
mb@tos.pl.net                    http://www.pl.net/~mario/      |\__/,|   (`\
Tariland, Atari Support in New Zealand                        _.|o o  |_   ) )
tariland@tos.pl.net     http://www.pl.net/~mario/tariland/ --(((---(((--------