(45 lines) Thanks to responders, summary of C internals questions

[Ron Schweikert]

A few weeks ago I requested information on C 'internals', ie: what happens
with pointer conversion, how are arguments processed on the stack etc.

I'm posting a short (?) response for two reasons: I had some requests, but
the major reason is that I wish to publicly thank those who responded.  I sent
mail messages to them personally, but got a bunch bounced back today.

I appreciate the time and effort that people put forth on this net to help
others, as well as the patience they show for those who have tried, but are
stumped.  As for my question, the patience was exercised since I hadn't
thoroughly considered the machine-dependency issue!

To all those who responded, please accept my thanks, and apologies that some
of my mail messages didn't get through to you. Special thanks to the following
people for their indepth responses and advice:

	Chris Torek (of course!), Bennett Todd (another very thorough response),
	Wietse Z. Venema, John Dobnick, Jim Blandy, Gordon Burditt 
	and Roger Critchlow

Summary of C 'internals' answers for those who also wanted to know:

Sorry if this is vague, but my questions about pointer conversion, argument
passing etc. are extremely machine dependent.  More than one person pointed this
out.  My questions should have been phrased 'on my particular implementation 
of C...'.  To really understand what happens, you have to learn assembly, since
any answers to specific questions like the ones posed above vary.  Some 
machines change pointers when cast, others don't.  Some implementations use
the stack for argument passing, some don't, and on and on.  I bought a book
on 68000 assembly and per advice, have started by writing simple C programs,
compiling with -S and learning from the assembler output.  Most enlightening!

Now I'll have to start bugging the comp.sys.m68k readers with my assembly 
questions unless I can find another book!  Univ. of Co. bookstore, here I come..

Thanks again.

P.S.  Again, please excuse me for consuming bandwith on personal thanks, I will
try to have the mailer more sane (and my use of it) for future thank-you 
responses.


-- 
Ron Schweikert
303/444-5710 x5026
{allegra,ucbvax,ncar,isieng}!nbires!hardy!nbife!ron