Yhc/RTS/Types
| Part of Yhc |
Because Yhc is ported to several platforms with different word sizes the meaning of the various primitive integer types is non-trivial. This appears both in the descriptions in this document and also in the runtime source code.
Yhc uses both hardware dependent and hardware independent integer types.
Hardware Dependent
The basis of the hardware dependent type is the Word which is always the size of a native pointer (generally either 32 or 64 bits). There are then names for various subdivisions of the Word.
Word or UInt - unsigned integer, same size as native pointer HWord or HUInt - unsigned integer, half the size of a Word QWord or QUInt - unsigned integer, quarter the size of a Word Int - signed integer, same size as Word HInt - signed integer, same size as HWord QInt - signed integer, same size as QWord
The distinction between Word and UInt (HWord and HUInt, etc) is whether the item in question is being used as a generic piece of space the same size as a pointer (Word) or whether it is used as an unsigned integer (UInt).
Hardware Independent
The hardware independent types are always exactly the same size on all platforms.
UByte or UInt8 - unsigned 8 bit integer UInt16 - unsigned 16 bit integer UInt32 - unsigned 32 bit integer Char or Int8 - signed 8 bit integer Int16 - signed 16 bit integer Int32 - signed 32 bit integer
The different between Char and Int8 is whether it is being used as character or simply as a small integer. The difference between UByte and UInt8 is the same difference as between Word and UInt.