To IBM 360 architecture, a word is 32 bits, or four contiguous eight-bit bytes. In Intel's PC processor architecture, a word is 16 bits, or two contiguous eight-bit bytes. I do not miss mainframes! :)


>One word is 32 bits. A dword is a double word, so it's 64 bits (or 8 bytes).
>
>>Hi Y'all,
>>
>>Trying to name a function correctly to put it into my library of functions. The following function was pulled from the UT and I want to rename it - but I don't exactly know what a DWORD is. Here is the function:
>>

>>
>>FUNCTION buffer2dword(lcBuffer)
>>
>>RETURN ASC(SUBSTR(lcBuffer, 1,1)) + ;
>>    ASC(SUBSTR(lcBuffer, 2,1)) * 256 +;
>>    ASC(SUBSTR(lcBuffer, 3,1)) * 65536 +;
>>    ASC(SUBSTR(lcBuffer, 4,1)) * 16777216
>>
>>

>>
>>Looking up some definitions via Google, it says "double word" but in this case, it contains a numeric value. Why would they call it a "word" when it contains a number?
>>
>>Also, what would you call something that is stored as base 256 (the passed in string seems to be base 256). I was thinking of calling the above function 'StringToDWord' but 'string' is a bit ambigous. Note: if worrying about a function name seems 'anal', I have a large library of functions and I think it is important to name them correctly!
>>
>>Thanks,
>>Albert Gostick