lvalues

[Merlyn Leroy]

>..Assignment
>to a bit-field cannot be explained in terms of lvalue and rvalue,
>but only in terms of extractor/updater functions.  The expression
>designating a bit-field cannot be evaluated to yield a context-free
>representable "value" that can be passed around, stored &c.  Hence there
>is no lvalue of a bit-field.

This is true of most machines; however, the new TI graphics chip is
bit-addressable, and pointers to bitfields are perfectly legal.
(This is of course a non-portable extension).  This is also a good
argument for little-endianism.

-- 
Merlyn Leroy	(...ihnp4!umn-cs!rosevax!rose3!merlyn!brian)