From ... From: Erik Naggum Subject: Re: Waving the lambda flag again (was: Constants and DEFCONSTANT) Date: 1999/04/08 Message-ID: <3132593479131324@naggum.no>#1/1 X-Deja-AN: 464173240 References: <7dr23c$2re$1@shell5.ba.best.com> <3131961221139730@naggum.no> <4niubflwhf.fsf@rtp.ericsson.se> <41UM2.19154$134.197089@tor-nn1.netcom.ca> <3132042770550791@naggum.no> <3132050414299555@naggum.no> <3132487825915707@naggum.no> <4npv5guv18.fsf@rtp.ericsson.se> <3132514507164896@naggum.no> <7ej0ia$l2v$1@spitting-spider.aracnet.com> mail-copies-to: never Organization: Naggum Software; +47 8800 8879; http://www.naggum.no Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp * mikemac@mikemac.com (Mike McDonald) | OK, this is where you lost me. 400 years takes 9 bits but you're going | to stick it in an 8 bit memory location? How are you doing that again? Mike, do me a favor, now. carefully, on your own, not posting anything until you're done, go away from the computer, pick up a refence book on Common Lisp, preferably the actual standard, but either CLtL or CLtL2 will do just fine, and _read_ about bytes operations in Common Lisp. here's a summary of the situation from historic perspective: the 8-bit byte at an 8-bit boundary is a special case of the more general byte concept. the 1990's hardware "byte" is 8 bits with the same machine address. the _software_ "byte" is any contiguous number of bits in an _integer_. some processors can extract a byte out of a machine integer in one operation, while others need two: a shift and a mask. because Common Lisp is not a hardware-oriented language, it does not deal with the machine concepts, but the historically correct _concept_. and _no_ bullshit about how this will confuse other ignorants, OK? #:Erik