Subj : Re: Any help on why?
To   : borland.public.cpp.borlandcpp
From : Bob Gonder
Date : Wed Jul 07 2004 01:58 pm

Wayne A. King wrote:

>On Wed, 07 Jul 2004 11:15:17 -0700, Bob Gonder wrote:
>
>>The %LX seems to correct endianness.
>
>The L is intended for use with e E f F G and is interpreted as a
>long double (80 bits). X is intended for use with integer types only.

My docs (BCB) show LX as uint64. So don't know about "intended".
Also firmly disagree on "integer types only". You can use %X on
ANYTHING that goes on the stack, and has the matching size for the
prefix to X.  I can't see Any way for that to mess up.
(Other than the implimentation not supporting LX as TC3/BC3 don't)
The OP is using BC5.02, so maybe it does better.

>You seem determined to persist in approaching the problem
>like an assembler programmer:  Exploit low level, platform and
>implementation-specific features, bit-fiddling, etc.

Then they shouldn't have placed 'cast' and 'union' in the language.
They encourage bit-fiddling.
Which is what C started out as.  It's dificult to write operating
systems in C without bit fiddling.  Besides, when I (and the OP in
this case) use %X, it is almost always in a debug type situation, when
platform or compiler differences are moot. Results are what count in
those cases, and wasting time making pretty (truly byte-fiddling)
expansive code just to see what's going on in there, especially when
that code is probably going to be deleted after the bug is caught.....

For production code, I use byte-fiddling routines (my asm heritage
makes me prefer not to use the printf family, and since I don't use
floats, it's no big loss to convert for myself).  But printf works
fine for quick-and-dirty, where I don't care overly about the output
quality or the speed.

>IMHO, the proper approach is as a disciplined, informed C/C++
>programmer attempting to use the language as designed so
>that the program works consistently and portably.

Depends I guess, on if you want to use it "as designed" in the 60/70's
or "as designed" in the 90's.  I still don't think of C as "designed"
in that manner. Though C++ certainly has gone (too far) down that
path.

.