Representation Clauses
Karl Keyte
KKEYTE at ESOC.BITNET
Mon Feb 18 22:35:39 AEST 1991
>>Actually, being able to specify a structure's element alignment
>>DOES guarantee portability.
>No, I stand by what I said. While, using the technique you suggest,
>structure member alignment would be a NECESSARY condition for
>portability, it would not be SUFFICIENT.
You're pre-judging here. You're making assumptions as to what kind of
data is being transferred. For many applications, the alignment WOULD
be adequate. It may be all bit-fields and integers. If there's a risk
of byte ordering problems in integers, one single flag byte could be
used to identify the scheme adopted at the source end.
>>If you know you receive an IEEE standard FP number in a particular
>>element then you can convert as appropriate.
>This has not been my experience, and it certainly does not apply to
>multi-byte integral types.
The '>>' line is taken out of context! Anyway, it's true! If you transfer
data according to IEEE formats, there is NO possible ambiguity even in the
representation of integers - a standard is defined for that.
>>It's a shortfall of the standard as far as I'm concerned.
>You're entitled to your opinion about that. I disagree.
Like I said, let's leave 'C' alone then. I should re-direct the discussion
to the C++ forum, which is a language still undergoing evolution.
Karl
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