[Mono-devel-list] Prevalence of pointer-integral-pointer castingin mono?

[Jonathan Pryor]

On Tue, 2004-08-03 at 11:39, Bernie Solomon wrote:
> I am not really sure what the questions are leading to.

I'm not either, and yet I keep posting.  Hmm...

> But I don't believe the current CLI spec supports 128-bit pointers
> at all. And the doc for IntPtr states:

I think that's primarily because 128-bit hardware doesn't exist, at
least not readily.  I don't know of anything that would preclude 128-bit
support in the standards.

> The IntPtr type is designed to be an integer whose size is
> platform-specific.

And this is the key point.  *Platform-specific*.  So, in 1000 years when
we have 2048-bit pan-universal super-computers, we can continue using
IntPtr and UIntPtr without any portability problems. :-)  Now *there's*
a software investment...

>  That is, an instance of this type is expected to be
> 32-bits on 32-bit hardware and operating systems, and 64-bits on
> 64-bit hardware and operating systems.
> 
> and does not mention any other possibilities.

Just because other possibilities aren't mentioned doesn't mean they
can't be supported.  To the contrary, the documentation doesn't
specifically state "only 32-bit and 64-bit platforms will ever be
supported," which would lead one to believe that it isn't specifically
precluded.  It's just not *currently* supported.

 - Jon