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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
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/*
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?)
*/