"Miller, Scott L" <Scott.L.Miller@[...].com>  wrote:
:>  From: Nicholas Clark [mailto:nick@[...].org]
:>  Not sure if this is a sane idea. Can you
:>  
:>  define the width of a negative integer to be the smallest 
:>  number of bits
:>  needed to represent it in 2s complement.
[...]
:How would you be able to tell if the number was intended to be negative?
:11010 = -6 or 26, 10111 = -9 or 23...

You always know from looking at the arguments: define sgn(x) as 0 for
positive and 1 for negative, and sgn(result) = sgn(left) op sgn(right)
does the right thing.

Hugo