Chapter 2. Computer Structures and Data Representations

When you develop applications in a high-level language, such as C or FORTRAN, you have to understand the features, capabilities, and limitations of the programming language more thoroughly than you need to know the nature of the computer architecture for which that language has been implemented. The computer appears to you to be a machine that executes C or FORTRAN statements and manipulates high-level data elements. For example, while standard FORTRAN provides for the storage and use of Boolean variables, the computer itself may not; the FORTRAN compiler implements Boolean variables using some other intrinsic data type that the computer architecture does support.

The actual structure of ...

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