Packed structures (was: Absolute size of 'short')

[Lee Carver]

In article ... davidsen at crdos1.UUCP (bill davidsen) writes:
> I would really like to see a "packed struct," also. This would be a
> struct packed on byte boundaries without fill, no matter *how bad* the
> code was to use them.

In article <1258 at ficc.UUCP> peter at ficc.UUCP (Peter da Silva) writes:
> ... how about ..
>      packed struct { int a:1; int b; int c:17; } argh;

Why should packing be constrained to byte boundarys.  Why not any
'type' boundary?  Sure, some elements might not have addresses, but
the code is probably machine/application dependent any.  Invariably
packed structures are.

So how about

	packed [ type-specifier ] [ structure-specifier ]

The elements of the structure-specifier are aligned to
type-specifier boundaries.  Maybe default to byte if an empty type-
specifier is used?  Allow the type specifer to be anything, even
other structures.

Then, some proposals might be represented as:

	packed short struct { char a; long b; char c; } blix;

	and for wierdness

	packed structure blix struct { float b; char *d;} blax;