Subject: Re: Waving the lambda flag again (was: Constants and DEFCONSTANT) From: Erik Naggum <erik@naggum.no> Date: 1999/04/08 Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp Message-ID: <3132565442188721@naggum.no> * pvaneynd@mail.inthan.be (Peter Van Eynde) | So now it's day -329? -328, actually. (floor (- (get-universal-time) (encode-universal-time 0 0 0 1 3 2000 0)) 86400) | Anyway we _need_ those extra 4 bits, where else would we place the type | info? well, there's the "Big Bag of Pages" design that allocates objects of individual types to large areas of virtual memory which makes it possible to use the highest few bits of an address as an index into a type table, instead of using the bits _explicitly_ to encode type. since very few objects would require less than 64 bits, they could all be aligned on even addresses, and fixnums could be a whopping 31 bits wide. whee! anyway... the 8-bit byte-addressable memory is here to stay as long as C is with us. are you happy now, Dennis Ritchie!? are you? </frustrated> #:Erik