Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!mcsun!hp4nl!charon!jack From: jack@cwi.nl (Jack Jansen) Newsgroups: comp.arch Subject: Re: RISC hard to program? (was: Moto's data predicts...) Message-ID: <1878@charon.cwi.nl> Date: 23 Jul 90 14:37:41 GMT References: <3241@bnr-rsc.UUCP> <37655@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU> Sender: news@cwi.nl Organization: AMOEBA project, CWI, Amsterdam Lines: 16 It seems that we're slowly drifting to another issue: there is no way to tell the C compiler that is should not use any fillers in structures, even though this results in inefficient code. If you have structure layout that is dictated, like a network packet, for instance, I would like to be able to tell the compiler 'I know this structure is unaligned, but please keep it so and generate inefficient code'. I had to port some tcp/ip stuff to a strict alignment machine, and there is a 32-bit field on a non-32 bit boundary somewhere in the IP header (I think, the details might be wrong, it's long ago). This meant I had to pack and unpack the field by hand. yuck. -- -- Een volk dat voor tirannen zwicht | Oral: Jack Jansen zal meer dan lijf en goed verliezen | Internet: jack@cwi.nl dan dooft het licht | Uucp: hp4nl!cwi.nl!jack