Dear MonetDB developers,
I'm almost done with the first steps of adding two new integer atoms to MonetDB:
a) a tiny (8-bit) integer.
b) a machine-word sized integer that grows with the system, i.e., 32-bit on 32-bit systems and 64-bit on 64-bit systems.
(a) is supposed to replace "chr" wherever "chr" is not used as a character type, but as a (tiny) 1-byte integer.
(b) is supposed to be the MIL pendant of the C type "var_t" and can/should be used, e.g., for BUN counts of BATs which are limited to 32-bit on 32-bit systems, but can grow to 64-bit on 64-bit systems.
For now, I chose the following names, sticking to the 3-letter "design", and picking combinations that do not yet exist in the code base:
a) "bte" (read "byte") b) "wrd" (read "word")
In a first checking (hopefully sometime next week), I will only add these new atoms (and add the proper functionality & new signatures where necessary), but not change any existing MIL proc/command signatures.
In a second check-in (maybe also already next week?), I plan to change (at least) the signature(s) of "count(BAT[any,any]) : int" & "count(int) : lng" to a single "count(BAT[any,any]) : wrd".
Maybe, I/we should later also consider to replace "chr" by "bte" in the enum module.
Well, so far so good.
I would be grateful, if you could comment on these plans.
Especially, I'd like to hear, whether there are better(?) suggestions for the names "bte" & "wrd". Further, did I miss any places, where we should/must use "bte" iso. "chr" and/or "wrd" iso. "int"/"lng"?
Thank you very much in advance!
Stefan