Bitfields in unions

[Eamonn McManus]

gvr at cs.brown.edu (George V. Reilly) writes:
>+ The ANSI C standard says explicitly that a union may contain a bitfield.
>Well, that's another thing that Harbison & Steele III have got wrong,
>then.

As I mentioned in my original message, K&R2 also seems to imply
obliquely that unions may not contain bitfields.  Section A8.3:

    ...

    A struct-declaration-list is a sequence of declarations for the
    members of the structure or union:

    ...

    Usually, a struct-declarator is just a declarator for a member of a
    structure or union.  A structure member may also consist of a
    specified numbers of bits.  Such a member is also called a
    /bit-field/, or merely /field/; its length is set off from the
    declarator for the field name by a colon.

	struct-declarator:
	    declarator
	    declarator[opt] : constant-expression

Although the grammar allows union bitfields, the text by saying `A
*structure* member may also...' seems to be excluding unions.  It should
say `A structure or union member...' or just `Such a member...'.

,
Eamonn