Mercurial > vim
annotate runtime/doc/develop.txt @ 7064:5fc5c5bf2233 v7.4.844
commit https://github.com/vim/vim/commit/37a8de17d4dfd3d463960c38a204ce399c8e19d4
Author: Bram Moolenaar <Bram@vim.org>
Date: Tue Sep 1 16:05:00 2015 +0200
patch 7.4.844
Problem: When '#' is in 'isident' the is# comparator doesn't work.
Solution: Don't use vim_isIDc(). (Yasuhiro Matsumoto)
| author | Christian Brabandt <cb@256bit.org> |
|---|---|
| date | Tue, 01 Sep 2015 16:15:04 +0200 |
| parents | c52a655d927d |
| children | 41768bcebc9b |
| rev | line source |
|---|---|
| 5763 | 1 *develop.txt* For Vim version 7.4. Last change: 2014 Mar 27 |
| 7 | 2 |
| 3 | |
| 4 VIM REFERENCE MANUAL by Bram Moolenaar | |
| 5 | |
| 6 | |
| 7 Development of Vim. *development* | |
| 8 | |
| 9 This text is important for those who want to be involved in further developing | |
| 10 Vim. | |
| 11 | |
| 12 1. Design goals |design-goals| | |
| 13 2. Coding style |coding-style| | |
| 14 3. Design decisions |design-decisions| | |
| 15 4. Assumptions |design-assumptions| | |
| 16 | |
| 17 See the file README.txt in the "src" directory for an overview of the source | |
| 18 code. | |
| 19 | |
| 20 Vim is open source software. Everybody is encouraged to contribute to help | |
| 21 improving Vim. For sending patches a context diff "diff -c" is preferred. | |
| 4358 | 22 Also see http://vim.wikia.com/wiki/How_to_make_and_submit_a_patch. |
| 7 | 23 |
| 24 ============================================================================== | |
| 25 1. Design goals *design-goals* | |
| 26 | |
| 27 Most important things come first (roughly). | |
| 28 | |
| 29 Note that quite a few items are contradicting. This is intentional. A | |
| 30 balance must be found between them. | |
| 31 | |
| 32 | |
| 33 VIM IS... VI COMPATIBLE *design-compatible* | |
| 34 | |
| 35 First of all, it should be possible to use Vim as a drop-in replacement for | |
| 36 Vi. When the user wants to, he can use Vim in compatible mode and hardly | |
| 37 notice any difference with the original Vi. | |
| 38 | |
| 39 Exceptions: | |
| 40 - We don't reproduce obvious Vi bugs in Vim. | |
| 41 - There are different versions of Vi. I am using Version 3.7 (6/7/85) as a | |
| 42 reference. But support for other versions is also included when possible. | |
| 43 The Vi part of POSIX is not considered a definitive source. | |
| 44 - Vim adds new commands, you cannot rely on some command to fail because it | |
| 45 didn't exist in Vi. | |
| 46 - Vim will have a lot of features that Vi doesn't have. Going back from Vim | |
| 47 to Vi will be a problem, this cannot be avoided. | |
| 48 - Some things are hardly ever used (open mode, sending an e-mail when | |
| 49 crashing, etc.). Those will only be included when someone has a good reason | |
| 50 why it should be included and it's not too much work. | |
| 51 - For some items it is debatable whether Vi compatibility should be | |
| 52 maintained. There will be an option flag for these. | |
| 53 | |
| 54 | |
| 55 VIM IS... IMPROVED *design-improved* | |
| 56 | |
| 57 The IMproved bits of Vim should make it a better Vi, without becoming a | |
| 58 completely different editor. Extensions are done with a "Vi spirit". | |
| 59 - Use the keyboard as much as feasible. The mouse requires a third hand, | |
| 60 which we don't have. Many terminals don't have a mouse. | |
| 61 - When the mouse is used anyway, avoid the need to switch back to the | |
| 62 keyboard. Avoid mixing mouse and keyboard handling. | |
| 63 - Add commands and options in a consistent way. Otherwise people will have a | |
| 64 hard time finding and remembering them. Keep in mind that more commands and | |
| 65 options will be added later. | |
| 66 - A feature that people do not know about is a useless feature. Don't add | |
|
2033
de5a43c5eedc
Update documentation files.
Bram Moolenaar <bram@zimbu.org>
parents:
1702
diff
changeset
|
67 obscure features, or at least add hints in documentation that they exist. |
| 7 | 68 - Minimize using CTRL and other modifiers, they are more difficult to type. |
| 69 - There are many first-time and inexperienced Vim users. Make it easy for | |
| 70 them to start using Vim and learn more over time. | |
| 71 - There is no limit to the features that can be added. Selecting new features | |
| 72 is one based on (1) what users ask for, (2) how much effort it takes to | |
| 73 implement and (3) someone actually implementing it. | |
| 74 | |
| 75 | |
| 76 VIM IS... MULTI PLATFORM *design-multi-platform* | |
| 77 | |
| 78 Vim tries to help as many users on as many platforms as possible. | |
| 79 - Support many kinds of terminals. The minimal demands are cursor positioning | |
| 80 and clear-screen. Commands should only use key strokes that most keyboards | |
| 81 have. Support all the keys on the keyboard for mapping. | |
| 82 - Support many platforms. A condition is that there is someone willing to do | |
| 83 Vim development on that platform, and it doesn't mean messing up the code. | |
| 84 - Support many compilers and libraries. Not everybody is able or allowed to | |
| 85 install another compiler or GUI library. | |
| 86 - People switch from one platform to another, and from GUI to terminal | |
| 87 version. Features should be present in all versions, or at least in as many | |
| 88 as possible with a reasonable effort. Try to avoid that users must switch | |
| 89 between platforms to accomplish their work efficiently. | |
| 90 - That a feature is not possible on some platforms, or only possible on one | |
| 91 platform, does not mean it cannot be implemented. [This intentionally | |
| 92 contradicts the previous item, these two must be balanced.] | |
| 93 | |
| 94 | |
| 95 VIM IS... WELL DOCUMENTED *design-documented* | |
| 96 | |
| 97 - A feature that isn't documented is a useless feature. A patch for a new | |
| 98 feature must include the documentation. | |
| 99 - Documentation should be comprehensive and understandable. Using examples is | |
| 100 recommended. | |
| 101 - Don't make the text unnecessarily long. Less documentation means that an | |
| 102 item is easier to find. | |
| 103 | |
| 104 | |
| 105 VIM IS... HIGH SPEED AND SMALL IN SIZE *design-speed-size* | |
| 106 | |
| 107 Using Vim must not be a big attack on system resources. Keep it small and | |
| 108 fast. | |
| 109 - Computers are becoming faster and bigger each year. Vim can grow too, but | |
| 110 no faster than computers are growing. Keep Vim usable on older systems. | |
| 111 - Many users start Vim from a shell very often. Startup time must be short. | |
| 112 - Commands must work efficiently. The time they consume must be as small as | |
| 113 possible. Useful commands may take longer. | |
| 114 - Don't forget that some people use Vim over a slow connection. Minimize the | |
| 115 communication overhead. | |
| 116 - Items that add considerably to the size and are not used by many people | |
| 117 should be a feature that can be disabled. | |
| 118 - Vim is a component among other components. Don't turn it into a massive | |
| 119 application, but have it work well together with other programs. | |
| 120 | |
| 121 | |
| 122 VIM IS... MAINTAINABLE *design-maintain* | |
| 123 | |
| 124 - The source code should not become a mess. It should be reliable code. | |
| 125 - Use the same layout in all files to make it easy to read |coding-style|. | |
| 481 | 126 - Use comments in a useful way! Quoting the function name and argument names |
| 127 is NOT useful. Do explain what they are for. | |
| 7 | 128 - Porting to another platform should be made easy, without having to change |
| 129 too much platform-independent code. | |
| 130 - Use the object-oriented spirit: Put data and code together. Minimize the | |
| 131 knowledge spread to other parts of the code. | |
| 132 | |
| 133 | |
| 134 VIM IS... FLEXIBLE *design-flexible* | |
| 135 | |
| 136 Vim should make it easy for users to work in their preferred styles rather | |
| 137 than coercing its users into particular patterns of work. This can be for | |
| 138 items with a large impact (e.g., the 'compatible' option) or for details. The | |
| 139 defaults are carefully chosen such that most users will enjoy using Vim as it | |
| 140 is. Commands and options can be used to adjust Vim to the desire of the user | |
| 141 and its environment. | |
| 142 | |
| 143 | |
| 144 VIM IS... NOT *design-not* | |
| 145 | |
| 146 - Vim is not a shell or an Operating System. You will not be able to run a | |
| 147 shell inside Vim or use it to control a debugger. This should work the | |
| 148 other way around: Use Vim as a component from a shell or in an IDE. | |
| 149 A satirical way to say this: "Unlike Emacs, Vim does not attempt to include | |
| 150 everything but the kitchen sink, but some people say that you can clean one | |
| 151 with it. ;-)" | |
| 722 | 152 To use Vim with gdb see: http://www.agide.org and http://clewn.sf.net. |
| 7 | 153 - Vim is not a fancy GUI editor that tries to look nice at the cost of |
| 154 being less consistent over all platforms. But functional GUI features are | |
| 155 welcomed. | |
| 156 | |
| 157 ============================================================================== | |
| 158 2. Coding style *coding-style* | |
| 159 | |
| 160 These are the rules to use when making changes to the Vim source code. Please | |
| 161 stick to these rules, to keep the sources readable and maintainable. | |
| 162 | |
| 163 This list is not complete. Look in the source code for more examples. | |
| 164 | |
| 165 | |
| 166 MAKING CHANGES *style-changes* | |
| 167 | |
| 168 The basic steps to make changes to the code: | |
| 169 1. Adjust the documentation. Doing this first gives you an impression of how | |
| 170 your changes affect the user. | |
| 171 2. Make the source code changes. | |
| 172 3. Check ../doc/todo.txt if the change affects any listed item. | |
| 173 4. Make a patch with "diff -c" against the unmodified code and docs. | |
| 174 5. Make a note about what changed and include it with the patch. | |
| 175 | |
| 176 | |
| 177 USE OF COMMON FUNCTIONS *style-functions* | |
| 178 | |
| 179 Some functions that are common to use, have a special Vim version. Always | |
| 180 consider using the Vim version, because they were introduced with a reason. | |
| 181 | |
| 182 NORMAL NAME VIM NAME DIFFERENCE OF VIM VERSION | |
| 183 free() vim_free() Checks for freeing NULL | |
| 184 malloc() alloc() Checks for out of memory situation | |
| 185 malloc() lalloc() Like alloc(), but has long argument | |
| 186 strcpy() STRCPY() Includes cast to (char *), for char_u * args | |
| 187 strchr() vim_strchr() Accepts special characters | |
| 188 strrchr() vim_strrchr() Accepts special characters | |
| 189 isspace() vim_isspace() Can handle characters > 128 | |
| 1240 | 190 iswhite() vim_iswhite() Only TRUE for tab and space |
| 711 | 191 memcpy() mch_memmove() Handles overlapped copies |
| 192 bcopy() mch_memmove() Handles overlapped copies | |
| 7 | 193 memset() vim_memset() Uniform for all systems |
| 194 | |
| 195 | |
| 196 NAMES *style-names* | |
| 197 | |
| 198 Function names can not be more than 31 characters long (because of VMS). | |
| 199 | |
| 200 Don't use "delete" as a variable name, C++ doesn't like it. | |
| 201 | |
| 202 Because of the requirement that Vim runs on as many systems as possible, we | |
| 203 need to avoid using names that are already defined by the system. This is a | |
| 204 list of names that are known to cause trouble. The name is given as a regexp | |
| 205 pattern. | |
| 206 | |
| 207 is.*() POSIX, ctype.h | |
| 208 to.*() POSIX, ctype.h | |
| 209 | |
| 210 d_.* POSIX, dirent.h | |
| 211 l_.* POSIX, fcntl.h | |
| 212 gr_.* POSIX, grp.h | |
| 213 pw_.* POSIX, pwd.h | |
| 214 sa_.* POSIX, signal.h | |
| 215 mem.* POSIX, string.h | |
| 216 str.* POSIX, string.h | |
| 217 wcs.* POSIX, string.h | |
| 218 st_.* POSIX, stat.h | |
| 219 tms_.* POSIX, times.h | |
| 220 tm_.* POSIX, time.h | |
| 221 c_.* POSIX, termios.h | |
| 222 MAX.* POSIX, limits.h | |
| 223 __.* POSIX, system | |
| 224 _[A-Z].* POSIX, system | |
| 225 E[A-Z0-9]* POSIX, errno.h | |
| 226 | |
| 1121 | 227 .*_t POSIX, for typedefs. Use .*_T instead. |
| 7 | 228 |
| 229 wait don't use as argument to a function, conflicts with types.h | |
| 230 index shadows global declaration | |
| 231 time shadows global declaration | |
| 232 new C++ reserved keyword | |
| 233 try Borland C++ doesn't like it to be used as a variable. | |
| 234 | |
| 3281 | 235 clear Mac curses.h |
| 236 echo Mac curses.h | |
| 237 instr Mac curses.h | |
| 238 meta Mac curses.h | |
| 239 newwin Mac curses.h | |
| 240 nl Mac curses.h | |
| 241 overwrite Mac curses.h | |
| 242 refresh Mac curses.h | |
| 243 scroll Mac curses.h | |
| 244 typeahead Mac curses.h | |
| 245 | |
| 7 | 246 basename() GNU string function |
| 247 dirname() GNU string function | |
| 248 get_env_value() Linux system function | |
| 249 | |
| 250 | |
| 251 VARIOUS *style-various* | |
| 252 | |
| 502 | 253 Typedef'ed names should end in "_T": > |
| 254 typedef int some_T; | |
| 7 | 255 Define'ed names should be uppercase: > |
| 256 #define SOME_THING | |
| 257 Features always start with "FEAT_": > | |
| 258 #define FEAT_FOO | |
| 259 | |
| 260 Don't use '\"', some compilers can't handle it. '"' works fine. | |
| 261 | |
| 262 Don't use: | |
| 263 #if HAVE_SOME | |
| 264 Some compilers can't handle that and complain that "HAVE_SOME" is not defined. | |
| 265 Use | |
| 266 #ifdef HAVE_SOME | |
| 267 or | |
| 268 #if defined(HAVE_SOME) | |
| 269 | |
| 270 | |
| 271 STYLE *style-examples* | |
| 272 | |
| 273 General rule: One statement per line. | |
| 274 | |
| 275 Wrong: if (cond) a = 1; | |
| 276 | |
| 277 OK: if (cond) | |
| 278 a = 1; | |
| 279 | |
| 280 Wrong: while (cond); | |
| 281 | |
| 282 OK: while (cond) | |
| 283 ; | |
| 284 | |
| 285 Wrong: do a = 1; while (cond); | |
| 286 | |
| 287 OK: do | |
| 288 a = 1; | |
| 289 while (cond); | |
| 290 | |
| 291 | |
| 292 Functions start with: | |
| 293 | |
| 294 Wrong: int function_name(int arg1, int arg2) | |
| 295 | |
| 296 OK: /* | |
| 297 * Explanation of what this function is used for. | |
| 298 * | |
| 299 * Return value explanation. | |
| 300 */ | |
| 301 int | |
| 302 function_name(arg1, arg2) | |
| 303 int arg1; /* short comment about arg1 */ | |
| 304 int arg2; /* short comment about arg2 */ | |
| 305 { | |
| 306 int local; /* comment about local */ | |
| 307 | |
| 308 local = arg1 * arg2; | |
| 309 | |
| 310 NOTE: Don't use ANSI style function declarations. A few people still have to | |
| 311 use a compiler that doesn't support it. | |
| 312 | |
| 313 | |
| 314 SPACES AND PUNCTUATION *style-spaces* | |
| 315 | |
| 316 No space between a function name and the bracket: | |
| 317 | |
| 318 Wrong: func (arg); | |
| 319 OK: func(arg); | |
| 320 | |
| 321 Do use a space after if, while, switch, etc. | |
| 322 | |
| 323 Wrong: if(arg) for(;;) | |
| 324 OK: if (arg) for (;;) | |
| 325 | |
| 326 Use a space after a comma and semicolon: | |
| 327 | |
| 328 Wrong: func(arg1,arg2); for (i = 0;i < 2;++i) | |
| 329 OK: func(arg1, arg2); for (i = 0; i < 2; ++i) | |
| 330 | |
| 331 Use a space before and after '=', '+', '/', etc. | |
| 332 | |
| 333 Wrong: var=a*5; | |
| 334 OK: var = a * 5; | |
| 335 | |
| 336 In general: Use empty lines to group lines of code together. Put a comment | |
|
2033
de5a43c5eedc
Update documentation files.
Bram Moolenaar <bram@zimbu.org>
parents:
1702
diff
changeset
|
337 just above the group of lines. This makes it easier to quickly see what is |
| 7 | 338 being done. |
| 339 | |
| 340 OK: /* Prepare for building the table. */ | |
| 341 get_first_item(); | |
| 342 table_idx = 0; | |
| 343 | |
| 344 /* Build the table */ | |
| 345 while (has_item()) | |
| 346 table[table_idx++] = next_item(); | |
| 347 | |
| 348 /* Finish up. */ | |
| 349 cleanup_items(); | |
| 350 generate_hash(table); | |
| 351 | |
| 352 ============================================================================== | |
| 353 3. Design decisions *design-decisions* | |
| 354 | |
| 355 Folding | |
| 356 | |
| 357 Several forms of folding should be possible for the same buffer. For example, | |
| 358 have one window that shows the text with function bodies folded, another | |
| 359 window that shows a function body. | |
| 360 | |
| 361 Folding is a way to display the text. It should not change the text itself. | |
| 362 Therefore the folding has been implemented as a filter between the text stored | |
| 363 in a buffer (buffer lines) and the text displayed in a window (logical lines). | |
| 364 | |
| 365 | |
| 366 Naming the window | |
| 367 | |
| 368 The word "window" is commonly used for several things: A window on the screen, | |
| 369 the xterm window, a window inside Vim to view a buffer. | |
| 370 To avoid confusion, other items that are sometimes called window have been | |
| 371 given another name. Here is an overview of the related items: | |
| 372 | |
| 373 screen The whole display. For the GUI it's something like 1024x768 | |
| 374 pixels. The Vim shell can use the whole screen or part of it. | |
| 375 shell The Vim application. This can cover the whole screen (e.g., | |
| 376 when running in a console) or part of it (xterm or GUI). | |
| 377 window View on a buffer. There can be several windows in Vim, | |
| 378 together with the command line, menubar, toolbar, etc. they | |
| 379 fit in the shell. | |
| 380 | |
| 381 | |
| 236 | 382 Spell checking *develop-spell* |
| 383 | |
| 384 When spell checking was going to be added to Vim a survey was done over the | |
| 385 available spell checking libraries and programs. Unfortunately, the result | |
| 386 was that none of them provided sufficient capabilities to be used as the spell | |
| 387 checking engine in Vim, for various reasons: | |
| 388 | |
| 389 - Missing support for multi-byte encodings. At least UTF-8 must be supported, | |
| 390 so that more than one language can be used in the same file. | |
| 323 | 391 Doing on-the-fly conversion is not always possible (would require iconv |
| 392 support). | |
| 236 | 393 - For the programs and libraries: Using them as-is would require installing |
| 323 | 394 them separately from Vim. That's mostly not impossible, but a drawback. |
| 236 | 395 - Performance: A few tests showed that it's possible to check spelling on the |
| 396 fly (while redrawing), just like syntax highlighting. But the mechanisms | |
| 625 | 397 used by other code are much slower. Myspell uses a hashtable, for example. |
| 398 The affix compression that most spell checkers use makes it slower too. | |
| 300 | 399 - For using an external program like aspell a communication mechanism would |
| 400 have to be setup. That's complicated to do in a portable way (Unix-only | |
| 401 would be relatively simple, but that's not good enough). And performance | |
| 402 will become a problem (lots of process switching involved). | |
| 236 | 403 - Missing support for words with non-word characters, such as "Etten-Leur" and |
| 404 "et al.", would require marking the pieces of them OK, lowering the | |
| 405 reliability. | |
| 406 - Missing support for regions or dialects. Makes it difficult to accept | |
| 407 all English words and highlight non-Canadian words differently. | |
| 408 - Missing support for rare words. Many words are correct but hardly ever used | |
| 409 and could be a misspelled often-used word. | |
| 323 | 410 - For making suggestions the speed is less important and requiring to install |
| 411 another program or library would be acceptable. But the word lists probably | |
| 412 differ, the suggestions may be wrong words. | |
| 7 | 413 |
| 625 | 414 |
| 415 Spelling suggestions *develop-spell-suggestions* | |
| 416 | |
| 417 For making suggestions there are two basic mechanisms: | |
| 418 1. Try changing the bad word a little bit and check for a match with a good | |
| 419 word. Or go through the list of good words, change them a little bit and | |
| 420 check for a match with the bad word. The changes are deleting a character, | |
| 421 inserting a character, swapping two characters, etc. | |
| 422 2. Perform soundfolding on both the bad word and the good words and then find | |
| 423 matches, possibly with a few changes like with the first mechanism. | |
| 424 | |
| 425 The first is good for finding typing mistakes. After experimenting with | |
| 426 hashtables and looking at solutions from other spell checkers the conclusion | |
| 427 was that a trie (a kind of tree structure) is ideal for this. Both for | |
| 428 reducing memory use and being able to try sensible changes. For example, when | |
| 429 inserting a character only characters that lead to good words need to be | |
| 430 tried. Other mechanisms (with hashtables) need to try all possible letters at | |
| 431 every position in the word. Also, a hashtable has the requirement that word | |
| 432 boundaries are identified separately, while a trie does not require this. | |
| 433 That makes the mechanism a lot simpler. | |
| 434 | |
| 435 Soundfolding is useful when someone knows how the words sounds but doesn't | |
| 436 know how it is spelled. For example, the word "dictionary" might be written | |
| 437 as "daktonerie". The number of changes that the first method would need to | |
| 438 try is very big, it's hard to find the good word that way. After soundfolding | |
| 439 the words become "tktnr" and "tkxnry", these differ by only two letters. | |
| 440 | |
| 441 To find words by their soundfolded equivalent (soundalike word) we need a list | |
| 442 of all soundfolded words. A few experiments have been done to find out what | |
| 443 the best method is. Alternatives: | |
| 444 1. Do the sound folding on the fly when looking for suggestions. This means | |
| 445 walking through the trie of good words, soundfolding each word and | |
| 446 checking how different it is from the bad word. This is very efficient for | |
| 447 memory use, but takes a long time. On a fast PC it takes a couple of | |
| 448 seconds for English, which can be acceptable for interactive use. But for | |
| 449 some languages it takes more than ten seconds (e.g., German, Catalan), | |
| 450 which is unacceptable slow. For batch processing (automatic corrections) | |
| 1197 | 451 it's too slow for all languages. |
| 625 | 452 2. Use a trie for the soundfolded words, so that searching can be done just |
| 453 like how it works without soundfolding. This requires remembering a list | |
| 454 of good words for each soundfolded word. This makes finding matches very | |
| 455 fast but requires quite a lot of memory, in the order of 1 to 10 Mbyte. | |
| 456 For some languages more than the original word list. | |
| 457 3. Like the second alternative, but reduce the amount of memory by using affix | |
| 458 compression and store only the soundfolded basic word. This is what Aspell | |
| 459 does. Disadvantage is that affixes need to be stripped from the bad word | |
| 460 before soundfolding it, which means that mistakes at the start and/or end | |
| 461 of the word will cause the mechanism to fail. Also, this becomes slow when | |
| 462 the bad word is quite different from the good word. | |
| 463 | |
| 464 The choice made is to use the second mechanism and use a separate file. This | |
| 465 way a user with sufficient memory can get very good suggestions while a user | |
| 466 who is short of memory or just wants the spell checking and no suggestions | |
| 467 doesn't use so much memory. | |
| 468 | |
| 469 | |
| 470 Word frequency | |
| 471 | |
| 472 For sorting suggestions it helps to know which words are common. In theory we | |
| 473 could store a word frequency with the word in the dictionary. However, this | |
| 474 requires storing a count per word. That degrades word tree compression a lot. | |
| 475 And maintaining the word frequency for all languages will be a heavy task. | |
| 476 Also, it would be nice to prefer words that are already in the text. This way | |
| 477 the words that appear in the specific text are preferred for suggestions. | |
| 478 | |
| 479 What has been implemented is to count words that have been seen during | |
| 480 displaying. A hashtable is used to quickly find the word count. The count is | |
| 481 initialized from words listed in COMMON items in the affix file, so that it | |
| 482 also works when starting a new file. | |
| 483 | |
| 484 This isn't ideal, because the longer Vim is running the higher the counts | |
| 1197 | 485 become. But in practice it is a noticeable improvement over not using the word |
| 625 | 486 count. |
| 487 | |
| 7 | 488 ============================================================================== |
| 489 4. Assumptions *design-assumptions* | |
| 490 | |
| 491 Size of variables: | |
| 492 char 8 bit signed | |
| 493 char_u 8 bit unsigned | |
| 625 | 494 int 32 or 64 bit signed (16 might be possible with limited features) |
| 495 unsigned 32 or 64 bit unsigned (16 as with ints) | |
| 7 | 496 long 32 or 64 bit signed, can hold a pointer |
| 497 | |
| 498 Note that some compilers cannot handle long lines or strings. The C89 | |
| 499 standard specifies a limit of 509 characters. | |
| 500 | |
| 501 vim:tw=78:ts=8:ft=help:norl: |