From: utzoo!decvax!cca!mo@Lbl-Unix@sri-unix
Newsgroups: net.unix-wizards
Title: Re: C sizeof
Article-I.D.: sri-unix.3099
Posted: Fri Sep  3 22:28:36 1982
Received: Thu Sep  9 05:49:03 1982

From: mo at Lbl-Unix (Mike O'Dell [system])
Date: 1 Sep 1982 10:01:24-PDT
Walt,
Not only is specifying structures so they look the same a boring task,
IT WON'T WORK!  You will never get around the BigEndian-LittleEndian
problem; Vax and 11's even argue over arrangement of Longs! The
real issue is that binary files are NEVER portable between machines.
You can write portable programs which use binary files internally
as temporaries, but you will never suceed in making them portable
without extreme ineffeciency in one place or another.  If you are
moving data between systems, it has gotta be ASCII strings,
and then you have to fight with IBM systems.  It is ironic that
the Unix world is just now discovering what the Software Tools
people have been doing for several years now: building software
which runs on many, many machines without modification.  If there
is interest (and I think there is), I am planning a talk on
"Software Tools Experiences Applied to the Unix World" for the
San Diego Usenix meeting.

	-Mike