Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/5/84; site tove.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!allegra!mit-eddie!godot!harvard!seismo!umcp-cs!tove!mark From: mark@tove.UUCP (Mark Weiser) Newsgroups: net.lang.c Subject: Re: structure problem - error or warning? Message-ID: <15@tove.UUCP> Date: Sat, 13-Oct-84 22:18:41 EDT Article-I.D.: tove.15 Posted: Sat Oct 13 22:18:41 1984 Date-Received: Mon, 15-Oct-84 01:39:53 EDT References: <564@ccice5.UUCP> Distribution: net Organization: U of Maryland, Laboratory for Parallel Computation, C.P., MD Lines: 11 > Why does the C compiler only give a warning instead of an error on the > use of an illegal structure member. That's no bug, that's a feature! It is a kind of cheap union, in which you can pick apart anything as though it were a structure. Now that C has real unions it is unnecessary, but there is a lot of C out there that depends on this "bug". -- Spoken: Mark Weiser ARPA: mark@maryland CSNet: mark@umcp-cs UUCP: {seismo,allegra}!umcp-cs!mark U.S.: Computer Science Dept., University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742