top, fixed buffer length in utils.c

[Brandon Allbery]

On Sun, Feb 15, 2015 at 10:56 PM, <kpneal at pobox.com> wrote:

> There
> will _never_ be a compiler of anything resembling popularity for any
> established FreeBSD host that has int as anything other than 32 bits in
> size.
>

This is optimistic beyond sanity, based on history. I was making a point as
well.... Really. People claimed this in the 16-bit days, because the idea
of something using 32 bits was obviously going to break things and be too
difficult to cope with. So where are we now?

There will be 64-bit CPUs, as opposed to 32-bit CPUs with 64-bit
extensions, in the future. Be certain of this. (Heck, there's already been
one, albeit not popular: DEC Alpha.) And eventually (unlike the Alpha) the
native word size will be used as the default word size because people ---
specifically, developers --- will want that. Which means (int) will change.

The only constant in the world is change. You can choose to change with it,
or to pretend that it doesn't/didn't happen. The latter just means you'll
be left in the dust wondering why the world isn't paying any attention to
you any more.

-- 
brandon s allbery kf8nh                               sine nomine associates
allbery.b at gmail.com                                  ballbery at sinenomine.net
unix, openafs, kerberos, infrastructure, xmonad        http://sinenomine.net