Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ukma!uflorida!novavax!twwells!bill
From: bill@twwells.com (T. William Wells)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: Zero Length Arrays Allowed in C Standard?
Message-ID: <1989Dec2.210042.12668@twwells.com>
Date: 2 Dec 89 21:00:42 GMT
References: <2298@jato.Jpl.Nasa.Gov> <11715@smoke.BRL.MIL> <480@codonics.COM>
Organization: None, Ft. Lauderdale, FL
Lines: 22

In article <480@codonics.COM> bret@codonics.com (Bret Orsburn) writes:
: >No; Standard C does not support zero-sized objects.
:
: Aargh! Whatever happened to "don't break existing code"?!
:
: What was the rationale behind this (IMHO) arbitrary obstruction?

Here we !@#$ing go again. Someone mistaking the details of their
particular implementation for legal C.

This "arbitrary obstruction" is common practice; most of the C
compilers I've worked with do *not* support zero sized objects.

I like the idea but life is that it is not portable.

That ANSI chose not to require it is unfortunate but does not
change anything for those of us who believe that programs should
be portable.

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Bill                    { uunet | novavax | ankh | sunvice } !twwells!bill
bill@twwells.com