Newsgroups: news.software.b
Path: utzoo!henry
From: henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: Cnews on System V/AT: "expression causes compiler loop"
Message-ID: <1989Nov24.164158.29747@utzoo.uucp>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
References: <3056@splut.conmicro.com> <1989Nov20.181839.1546@utzoo.uucp> <1676@crdos1.crd.ge.COM> <1063@east.East.Sun.COM> <1989Nov21.17513 <480@mwtech.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 24 Nov 89 16:41:58 GMT

In article <480@mwtech.UUCP> martin@mwtech.UUCP (Martin Weitzel) writes:
>Did you ever think about the following alternative to offsetof():
>2) When 'make'ing the programm, *automatically* generate an
>   #include-file with the required #defines by
>   2a) compile and run a programm, which calculates
>       the offset by taking the difference of the
>       struct.component-s adress and the struct-s adress...

Can't say we'd thought about it, but it boils down to doing the same thing
a step at a time in a separate program rather than all at once in the main
program.  I'm not sure that it really gains us much, except reducing the
complexity of the expressions the compiler is asked to handle... and we
made an explicit decision very early on that it was hopeless to try to
cater to all the defective compilers in the world.

If it gained us something on portability or something like that, that
might be sufficient added motive to do it.  As it is, it just looks like
extra complexity for the sake of one or two broken compilers.  Sorry.
-- 
That's not a joke, that's      |     Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
NASA.  -Nick Szabo             | uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry@zoo.toronto.edu