[Aldor-l] SInt

[Ralf Hemmecke]

I've just stumbled over SInt on page 7 of 
http://axiom-portal.newsynthesis.org/refs/articles/foam.pdf

There it says:

[SInt <single-int-value>]
     2's complement 32 bit integer (at least 24 bit?)

Stephen, what exacly is SInt? Isn't SInt directly connected to the SInt 
in the AUG page 149:
=====
XByte, HInt, SInt, BInt: Type
   These are integer types of various sizes. The types XByte, HInt,
   SInt are unsigned byte, half-precision and single-precision
   integer types, capable of representing values in at least the
   ranges 0 to 255, -32767 to 32767 and -2147483647 to 2147483647,
   respectively. The type BInt provides a "big" integer type, which,
   in principle, may be of any size. In practice, the size will be
   limited by considerations such as the amount of memory available
   to a program.
=====

So is the "(at least 24 bit?)" just to igonore?

Oh, by the way, the negative numbers for HInt and SInt are correctly 
copied from the AUG. They are *not* -2^15 or -2^31. So at least the I 
cannot blame libaldor from doing something wrong in 
lib/aldor/src/arith/sal_itools.as

print(x:T, base:T, p:TextWriter):TextWriter == {
    macro REC == Record(digit:Character, next:Pointer);
    import from Boolean, Character, REC;
    zero? x => p << char 48;
    if x < 0 then {
         p := p << minus;
         x := -x;               <----- here
     }
     ...
}

but rather the implementation of 'min' in lib/aldor/src/base/sal_base.as 
is wrong or, since that simply says

   min:%	== per min;

for Rep == SInt, the implementation of 'min' in SInt is wrong.

Stephen, could you clarify what exactly should be the most negative 
value of SInt? And is there a specification saying that for every x from 
SInt also -x must be of type SInt?

Ralf