[vos-d] datatypes

[Lalo Martins]

On Mon, 22 Jan 2007 10:07:43 -0500, Peter Amstutz wrote:
> Quick technical design question I wanted to throw out for debate: 
> unsigned types.  The current s5 design calls for 8, 16, 32 and 64 bit 
> signed and unsigned integer types, in addition to single- and 
> double-precision floats.  It recently occurred to me that some important 
> languages don't have unsigned types (Java being the main one, but also 
> many dynamically typed languages only have a single "integer" or 
> "number" type).
> 
> Does it make sense to axe unsigned types from the basic core types in 
> the interests of harmony between languages, or do we want as diverse a 
> set of basic types as possible and leave it up to the language binding 
> to deal with it?  (Then you have to figure out what the correct behavior 
> is when you pass in a negative number to an unsigned type...)

Python doesn't have unsigned types, but the functions that convert data
between C and Python know about them.  I'm not quite partial either way; I
like unsigned for blobs, as you say.  Although arguably blobs should be
strings...

best,
                                               Lalo Martins
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