what's the defintion of 'small'?

• To: netcdfgroup@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
• Subject: what's the defintion of 'small'?
• From: frank@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Frank Chen)
• Date: Fri, 9 Oct 1992 16:24:02 EDT

When I built the netcdf package on SGI/IRIX 4.0.5, the message generated
during the testing of xdr is like this:

        [Delete ...]
        Making `test' in /people_a/frank/netcdf/netcdf/xdr
        2c2
        < bytes: 254 1 0 1 2 0 0 0 
        ---
        > bytes: -2 1 0 1 2 0 0 0 
        *** XDR fails formatted test ***
        The above differences are OK if small
        *** XDR passes binary test ***
        [Delete ...]

Is the difference between '254' and '-2' **SMALL**?
I believe that message is for comparing the difference in vax and ieee
floating point format. 'od' command shows that the byte in question is
'0xfe'. 
My question is: is this correct? 
        The 'xdrtest.c' declare those eight bytes to be 
        'static unsigned char bytes[8]' for XDR_PUTBYTES
        but use 'signed char *bp' for XDR_GETBYTES
        Is this problem with IRIX's xdr or just for xdrtest.c?
        Does ncdump affected when dealing with byte variables?
        Does system default setting of signed/unsigned for char/byte
        affect netcdf package? 


-Frank Chen
P.S. Is there anyone successfully compile the hdf-netcdf stuff on
SGI/IRIX?(including fortran testing). It fails when calling tncredf.