Alignment issues and SPARC (commentary)

[Gary Wisniewski]

In article <7959 at brl-smoke.ARPA> gwyn at brl.arpa (Doug Gwyn (VLD/VMB) <gwyn>) writes:
>In article <326 at apexepa.UUCP> gary at apexepa.UUCP (Gary Wisniewski) writes:
>>	2.  I regretted making some assumptions about the viability of
>>		memcpy(buf, (char *)&h, sizeof(h));
>>	    where 'h' is anything but a char.
>
>What's the problem?  memcpy() certainly does not require any particular
>alignment of the data it copies.  (Overlaps may yield surprises, though.)

My original posting contained an unfortunate transposition of ideas.
I intended to say:

	2.  I regretted making some assumptions about the viability of
	      *((type*)buf) = h;
	    where 'type' is not the type of 'h'.

Sounds better, doesn't it?  The memcpy construction is, of course, portable
unless the format of 'buf' is in question (memcpy a structure to a char buf,
then extract items separately--naughty.)

Sorry for any confusion or alarm.

-- 
Gary J. Wisniewski				  Apex Software Corporation
{allegra,bellcore,cadre}!pitt!darth!apexepa!gary  Phone: (412) 681-4343