Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!purdue!haven!adm!smoke!gwyn
From: gwyn@smoke.BRL.MIL (Doug Gwyn)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: Is this a bug in some C compilers?
Message-ID: <10561@smoke.BRL.MIL>
Date: 19 Jul 89 16:13:48 GMT
References: <800@sbsvax.UUCP>
Reply-To: gwyn@brl.arpa (Doug Gwyn)
Organization: Ballistic Research Lab (BRL), APG, MD.
Lines: 12

In article <800@sbsvax.UUCP> greim@sbsvax.UUCP (Michael Greim) writes:
>Am I correct to say that the program is not correct C, and that all compilers
>which compile it are wrong?

Certainly it's not correct C.

For reasons that we've recently discussed, older compilers were rather
cavalier about structure members.  If the programmer wanted to insist
on treating non-structs (or the wrong kind of structs) as having certain
members, the compiler would attempt to comply.

A standard-conforming compiler is required to diagnose such misusage.