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From: brnstnd@stealth.acf.nyu.edu
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: casting to/from union types
Message-ID: <17366:Jun611:02:3590@stealth.acf.nyu.edu>
Date: 6 Jun 90 11:02:35 GMT
References: <523@cpsolv.CPS.COM> <235@taumet.COM>
Reply-To: brnstnd@stealth.acf.nyu.edu (Dan Bernstein)
Distribution: usa
Organization: IR
Lines: 12

In article <235@taumet.COM> steve@taumet.UUCP (Stephen Clamage) writes:
  [ on casting from a component type to the union type ]
> It seems unnecessary to invent an extension to C to accomodate what must
> be a very unusual operation.

There's at least one ``usual'' example of essentially the same problem,
namely in BSD Internet socket programming: struct in_addr has just a
single component, namely u_long s_addr. In the one case where I ever
used one value as both those types, I kept just the struct around, and
referred to its s_addr component when necessary. This always works.

---Dan