How portable are bitfields?

[Steve Friedl]

Hiho folks,

     In our Allegedly Portable Software we have run into some
code that could naturally use bitfields to nice advantage (in
readability, at least), and I wonder how reasonably I can rely on
compilers to support them properly.  I generally know the
portability concerns for bitfields when they are supported
properly by the compiler, but I seem to notice that bugs related
to bitfields seem to have had problems for as long as I can
remember (since the early eighties).

     Do people porting software to lots of different machines
generally avoid bitfields?

     Steve

-- 
Stephen J. Friedl, KA8CMY / I speak for me only / Tustin, CA / 3B2-kind-of-guy
+1 714 544 6561  / friedl at mtndew.Tustin.CA.US  / {uunet,attmail}!mtndew!friedl

Steve's bright idea #44: COBOL interface library for X Windows