In message <Pine.LNX.3.96.991219024645.1758A-100000@guild.net>, Lord Isildur wr
ites:
>linearly addressable storage is one of the fundamental tenets of C. 

No, it really isn't.  Just think about segmented memory schemes.

>This is made very clear by the very creators of the language, and any
>attampt to implement C where this is not available ends up jumping through
>a lot of hoops to effectively simulate this. C's conspicuous lack of
>restrictive high-level specifics is precisely the reson is _can_ be ported
>even to such strange machines. In C, it's all memory. 

The complete lack of specification also says that you can use any *other*
scheme you want.

Nothing promises that pointers within different objects can be meaningfully
compared for "greater than" or "less than", for instance.  The language
specifically *forbids* any attempt to make sense of such comparisons.

C originated on flat memory machines; however, it wasn't designed to require
or assume them.  It has some quirks that probably originated as assumptions
about those machines, but it's evolved since then.

In a couple weeks here, you'll be able to get the C9X spec and see for
yourself where the language is these days.  ;-)

(Distressingly, I'm told it's now the official standard, even though there are
probably no more than 50 people in the world who have copies.  Ugh.)

-s