Variable size/Set

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Revision as of 22:58, 7 June 2007 by rosettacode>Daxim (Perl)
Task
Variable size/Set
You are encouraged to solve this task according to the task description, using any language you may know.

Demonstrate how to specify the minimum size of a variable or a data type.

Ada

type Response is (Yes, No); -- Definition of an enumeration type with two values
for Response'Size use 1; -- Setting the size of Response to 1 bit, rather than the default single byte size

Perl

I suppose you could use vec() or similar to twiddle a single bit. The thing is, as soon as you store this in a variable, the SV (the underlying C implementation of the most simple data type) already takes a couple dozen of bytes.

In Perl, memory is readily and happily traded for expressiveness and ease of use.