Uses of "short" ?

[Peter da Silva]

Would it be a horrid assault on the spirit of 'C' to allow the following:

int x:24;

Which will be allocated the appropriate number of words for the machine
involved? If this looks too much like a bit-field, and you're allergic
to that for some reason, how about:

int:24 x;

Then you can define

float foo:16;

if you really think you can do something useful with 16-bit floats. Someone
must use them for something...