Origin of Cardinal=Dword?
Origin of Cardinal=Dword?
I was trying to find an alias for "dword" and from my Pascal experience the word "cardinal" comes to mind. The meaning of "dword" is very straight forward, double word or 4-bytes. Cardinal is a mathematical term but why was it chosen to represent a dword or 32-bit number?
-
BitWise
- In Memoriam
- Posts: 996
- Joined: 02 Mar 2004
- Location: Berkshire, UK
- Contact:
Re: Origin of Cardinal=Dword?
Cardinals in Pascal are unsigned.
In the C world 'long' is at least 32-bits.
In the C world 'long' is at least 32-bits.
Last edited by BitWise on Thu May 28, 2020 7:20 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Andrew Jacobs
6502 & PIC Stuff - http://www.obelisk.me.uk/
Cross-Platform 6502/65C02/65816 Macro Assembler - http://www.obelisk.me.uk/dev65/
Open Source Projects - https://github.com/andrew-jacobs
6502 & PIC Stuff - http://www.obelisk.me.uk/
Cross-Platform 6502/65C02/65816 Macro Assembler - http://www.obelisk.me.uk/dev65/
Open Source Projects - https://github.com/andrew-jacobs
Re: Origin of Cardinal=Dword?
Indeed, cardinals are for counting, mathematically speaking, and unsigned numbers are also good for counting.