Representation Clauses

[Richard Tobin]

In article <91042.160311KKEYTE at ESOC.BITNET> KKEYTE at ESOC.BITNET (Karl Keyte) writes:
>How flexible are ANSI?  I.e. is 'C's standardisation fixed?

There's no chance of changing the current ANSI standard.  In ten years
or so, there might be another one.

>  struct ALIGN_TEST
>  {
>     int       a      at 0;
>     char      b      at 4;
>     float     c      at 8;
>  }

You can solve this for most machines by doing something like this:

struct {
    union {int   a; char x[4];} a;
    union {char  b; char x[4];} b;
    union {float c; char x[4];} c;
} s;

Of course, if sizeof(int) is greater than 4 you're going to lose.  And
you have to say s.a.a instead of s.a.

-- Richard
-- 
Richard Tobin,                       JANET: R.Tobin at uk.ac.ed             
AI Applications Institute,           ARPA:  R.Tobin%uk.ac.ed at nsfnet-relay.ac.uk
Edinburgh University.                UUCP:  ...!ukc!ed.ac.uk!R.Tobin