[Oberon] Why is RSC string data word-aligned?

[Paul Reed]

Hi Colby,

> ...  So again: in
> concrete terms, where does the efficiency for [string] word alignment 
> come in?

String assignment (as has been pointed out). The code generated by 
ORG.CopyString moves string data around by words, filling the full 
32-bits of a register buffer with string data on each loop iteration. 
This may happen many times over and over again as code is running, once 
a module is loaded into memory.

The unaligned data in a .rsc file is, I agree, unfortunate, as it could 
have been aligned relatively easily and then data could have been copied 
into memory a word at a time. But module loading only happens once, and 
there's lots of other stuff to do too, so as you say it was likely 
deemed not worth it.

HTH,
Paul