RISC Machine Data Structure Word Alignment Problems?

[Ronald S H Khoo]

In article <17906 at rpp386.cactus.org> woody at rpp386.cactus.org (Woodrow Baker) writes:
> 
> MS-DOS.  I have to do things like reach out over the network, and read
> data structures out of the remote controllers.  These structures for the
> most part, are a mix of byte and word fields.  I then have to parse through
> them, and isolate the parts.  Structures are the obvious way to do this.
> BUT, the @#$% compiler choses to pad byte or char values out to ints.

#ifdef MEDIUM_MADRAS

You don't think this is a hint that it would have been *so* much easier
if everything spoke *text* instead.  Sure, there's the overhead of
binary->text->binary, but the advantages outweigh the cost, especially
if you ever have a mix of controllers with wildly differing internal
architectures.

Oh, you want to discourage that to lock your customers in? Excuse me.

#endif

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