Date:        Wed, 6 Oct 1999 10:13:41 -0700 (PDT)
    From:        Bill Studenmund <wrstuden@nas.nasa.gov>
    Message-ID:  <Pine.SOL.3.96.991006095827.19001B-100000@marcy.nas.nasa.gov>


  | I kinda like Chuck's idea of using negative values for non-power-of-2
  | block sizes. Then we're down to one value, and we always have the shift
  | when we need it.

Rather than negative, would it perhaps make more sense (well, be a little
easier to comprehend) to just have a dividing line at value 32.

That is, values < 32 are shift counts (power of two block sizes up to
2GB blocks) and values >= 32 are block sizes (block sizes 32 bytes or
bigger).   This means no non-power-of-2 blocks smaller than 32 bytes,
but is that a loss?   It also leaves negative values to be able to
indicate unset, or error, or whatever else might be useful (still allowing
conditional compilation to drop out the non-power-of-2 handling if
desired).

kre