CHAPTER TWO

INFORMATION STRUCTURES

2.1. INTRODUCTION

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We will illustrate methods of dealing with information structures in terms of the MMIX computer. A reader who does not care to look through detailed MMIX programs should at least study the ways in which structural information is represented in MMIX’s memory.

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As a more interesting example, suppose the elements of our table are intended to represent playing cards; we might have two-octabyte nodes broken into five fields, TAG, SUIT, RANK, TITLE, and NEXT:

Image

(This format reflects the content of two octabytes; see Section 1.3.1´.)

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TAG is stored as one BYTE; TAG = #80 means that ...

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