[comp.lang.c] Pointers in C on an unIntelligent processor

rob@kaa.eng.ohio-state.edu (Rob Carriere) (09/05/88)

The example everybody was citing when it came to proving that
Numerical Recipes was non-portable code (and yes, you have convinced
me, never worry about that) was the Intel 80*86.  Now I was borrowing
a friends Turbo-C manual the other day (for a completely different
reason) and looked up pointers, just to see how bad it was (Ugh!).

I was quite surprised to find, though, that the manual seems to claim
that NR code would work on a PC.  While they are not quite clear as to
what happens with near pointers, they state far pointers wrap around
both ways, which would make the code work, and huge pointers
essentially implement linear memory, so that'd work as well.  Am I
missing something, or was the 80*86 an invalid counterexample?

Rob Carriere
My middle name is Curious.