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From: leichter@yale.UUCP (Jerry Leichter)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: portability and standards
Message-ID: <13515@yale-celray.yale.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 11-Jul-87 17:19:52 EDT
Article-I.D.: yale-cel.13515
Posted: Sat Jul 11 17:19:52 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 12-Jul-87 16:48:10 EDT
References: <8113@brl-adm.ARPA> <1057@rtech.UUCP>
Reply-To: leichter@yale-celray.UUCP (Jerry Leichter)
Organization: Yale University Computer Science Dept, New Haven CT
Lines: 15

In article <1057@rtech.UUCP> wong@llama.UUCP (J. Wong) writes:
>Although this is "safe" and "proper", it is not space efficient.  The DEC C
>implementation allocates all global variables separately, each in a separate
>PSECT.  Since a PSECT is a page, this results in a lot of wasted space.  In
>addition, if you happen to have a declaration that is not used, it still
>forces the definition to be linked into the image.
>

The above comment is nonsense.  PSECT's can be any size; the alignment they
are forced to can be set to anything from a byte to a page.  Data PSECT's
produced for C extern's are given the alignment appropriate for the data
they contain.  Starting with V2.3 of VAX C, you can even specify the alignment
you want (with the VAX C-specific _align storage class modifier).

							-- Jerry