Re: bitshift of int8, int16, etc?

[Daniel J Sebald]

David Bateman wrote:
> Daniel J Sebald wrote:
>
> > David Bateman wrote:
> >
> >
> > > This is the standard behavior of an arithmetic shift.. See
> > >
> > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arithmetic_shift
> >
> > I looked at that reference yesterday.  OK, good then.
> >
> >
> >
> > > Ok, saturation might make sense. My preference was or an arithmetic
> > > shift as a shift operator that had a clear and documented functionality.
> >
> > DSP chips often have a control register with a bit to change such
> > behavior, i.e. wrap or saturate.
>
>
> Hey I know, I did write a fixed point type :-) ....

Oh, that's right, Motorola.  Got a few books lying around from them...


> Do we need to know the overflow of each and every element,

I would think so.  Seems the logical thing to do, if anything.


> or just that
> an overflow occurred? I'd thought more the second case and then just have
>
> warning ("Octave:bitshift_overflow", "on")
>
> to enable the warning if desired. The fact is that as matlab doesn't
> implement this yet, whatever we choose to do will be wrong in any case
> and need modifying in the long run. So simple is probably better..

Until then can live wild and free.

Dan