Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site brl-tgr.ARPA Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!allegra!mit-eddie!godot!harvard!seismo!brl-tgr!tgr!cottrell@nbs-vms.ARPA From: cottrell@nbs-vms.ARPA Newsgroups: net.lang.c Subject: derived types Message-ID: <7479@brl-tgr.ARPA> Date: Thu, 17-Jan-85 15:10:52 EST Article-I.D.: brl-tgr.7479 Posted: Thu Jan 17 15:10:52 1985 Date-Received: Fri, 18-Jan-85 10:27:24 EST Sender: news@brl-tgr.ARPA Organization: Ballistic Research Lab Lines: 15 /* one of the constraints not mentioned so far (or i missed it) is that sizeof(int) must be the same as sizeof(int *). the practice of defining derived types is an attempt to avoid machine dependency. however, why not say what we REALLY (yes, my tty has caps) mean: dispense with char, short, int, long, and use byte, word, long, and quad. my model is the vax, with sizes of 8, 16, 32, & 64 bits respectively. while this is somewhat ethnocentric, it pays homage to the fact that unix was developed on these two machines primarily. weird machines such as u1108 (b=9, w=18, l=36, q=72) and cdc6400 (b=6?, w=15, l=30, q=60) would have to adapt as best they can (they kinda have to now anyway). this unfortunately blows the correspondence between int & int *, but i suspect that the standard will have something more to say about ptr's than the opening sentence of this paragraph. (b=10 for cdc6400?) */