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!cbosgd!ihnp4!mhuxn!mhuxj!mhuxr!ulysses!allegra!mit-eddie!godot!harvard!seismo!brl-tgr!tgr!Schauble@MIT-MULTICS.ARPA From: Paul SchaubleNewsgroups: net.lang.c Subject: re: Unaligned and aligned structures Message-ID: <6892@brl-tgr.ARPA> Date: Wed, 2-Jan-85 01:35:49 EST Article-I.D.: brl-tgr.6892 Posted: Wed Jan 2 01:35:49 1985 Date-Received: Thu, 3-Jan-85 03:46:18 EST Sender: news@brl-tgr.ARPA Organization: Ballistic Research Lab Lines: 19 The unaligned type modifier proposed by Joseph Yao already exists in other languages. It is, however, usually taken to be a property of the structure rather than of an individual data type. E.g. struct foo aligned {... This is portable, even to machines that require alignment. It just demands that the compiler generate non-alignment dependant moves to/from an aligned area. This is what the programmer has to do when a truly unaligned structure is needed. !Better the machine do it than me! Hay Committee...Unlike the recent proposal on decimal arithmetic, which I feel does not fit the intent of C as an implementation language, this one does fit. I have frequently needed truly non-aligned structures to communicate with hardware, data files from other machines, etc. I suggest that this get made a standard extension. Paul