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From: scott@bbxsda.UUCP (Scott Amspoker)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: Function returning Structure:  How does it work?
Keywords: structure, struct
Message-ID: <772@bbxsda.UUCP>
Date: 5 Jun 90 20:17:15 GMT
References: <1990May28.215331.29333@agate.berkeley.edu> <1990May28.235336.5338@Neon.Stanford.EDU> <18222@well.sf.ca.us>
Reply-To: scott@bbxsda.UUCP (Scott Amspoker)
Distribution: usa
Organization: Basis International,  Albuquerque, NM
Lines: 27

In article <18222@well.sf.ca.us> rld@well.sf.ca.us (Rick Davis) writes:
>> Of course, this
>> can lead to a great deal of copying so most of the time you're better off
>> arranging things for the function to have type STRUCT * instead.
>
>I can't agree with this too strongly.  Passing entire structures back
>and forth is almost always a serious waste of time and stack space.

...unless the structure can fit in a single word.  I've seen compilers
which handle that rather nicely.

>Also, some implementations of C won't even let you try.  Code portability
>alone works for me.

We been porting our C code to dozens of different platforms and C compilers 
for the *past 5 years* and have never encountered a C compiler that did
not allow structure assignment.  Much older compilers, however, might
complain.  Such compilers typically conform to old K&R and also don't
maintain separate name spaces for structure field names.  That's asking
too much for portability IMHO.


-- 
Scott Amspoker
Basis International, Albuquerque, NM
(505) 345-5232
unmvax.cs.unm.edu!bbx!bbxsda!scott