Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!clyde.concordia.ca!uunet!codonics!bret
From: bret@codonics.COM (Bret Orsburn)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: Zero Length Arrays Allowed in C Standard?
Message-ID: <556@codonics.COM>
Date: 8 Dec 89 20:27:26 GMT
References: <2298@jato.Jpl.Nasa.Gov> <11715@smoke.BRL.MIL> <480@codonics.COM> <8141@cg-atla.UUCP> <7349@quick.COM>
Reply-To: bret@codonics.UUCP (Bret Orsburn)
Organization: Codonics, Inc., Middleburg Heights, OH
Lines: 27

In article <7349@quick.COM> srg@quick.COM (Spencer Garrett) writes:
>How would you deal with the following?
>
>	struct blat {
>		struct blat    *next;
>		int		value;
>		char		name[0];
>	} *new;
>If you
>declare it "char name[1]" then there's no portable way to get the
>size of the header (since you can't predict how much padding may
>need to be added).

Sorry if I am missing some subtlety here, (if so, I have probably edited
out the meat of it) but it seems pretty clear to me that the padding bytes
should exist in the zero-length case as well. Otherwise, the array "name"
is not legally aligned.

--
rn:
go
away
-- 
-------------------
bret@codonics.com
uunet!codonics!bret
Bret Orsburn