Is simple assignment allowed with structs

Fraser Wilson fraser at mullauna.cs.mu.OZ.AU
Tue Apr 9 13:53:22 AEST 1991


gwyn at smoke.brl.mil (Doug Gwyn) writes:

>In article <1991Apr8.073710.22673 at netcom.COM> avery at netcom.COM (Avery Colter) writes:
>>gwyn at smoke.brl.mil (Doug Gwyn) writes:
>>>>I tried adding two structs and that did not work.
>>>Of course not.  What would it mean?
>>Now, of course, there is nothing stopping you from making a little function
>>to "add" two structs of the same type and return a struct of this type
>>as the function result; the body of the function would just be field-by-field
>>simple addition of the parallel field values in the input structs.

>This is not always possible, for example for pointer members.
>Even if it were possible, it may not correctly represent an algebraic
>"addition" of the quantities represented by the structures, although
>often it would.

I think what was meant here is to write a unique addition function for
each struct.  Ie, you would only write meaningful addition functions,
and you wouldn't add pointers together.  So yes, it is always possible.

Fraser.

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