Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ncar!ico!haddock!karl
From: karl@haddock.ima.isc.com (Karl Heuer)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: Operations on pointers to void.
Message-ID: <17421@haddock.ima.isc.com>
Date: 15 Aug 90 22:56:11 GMT
References: <1990Aug9.231614.5196@basho.uucp> <1990Aug10.165644.9238@zoo.toronto.edu> <482@array.UUCP> <1990Aug12.231202.23826@druid.uucp>
Reply-To: karl@kelp.ima.isc.com (Karl Heuer)
Organization: Interactive Systems, Cambridge, MA 02138-5302
Lines: 12

In article <1990Aug12.231202.23826@druid.uucp> darcy@druid.uucp (D'Arcy J.M. Cain) writes:
>Perhaps we need a new type which acts like void * but allows pointer
>arithmetic based on the smallest data type supported by the system, usually
>(but not always) a byte.

Trouble is, there's no convenient way to describe the operation of
incrementing a pointer by less than a byte, since `sizeof(char)' is
required to be exactly 1.  (This, in turn, is really caused by the
unfortunate overloading of `char' for three logically distinct types;
but it's much too late to fix that.)

Karl W. Z. Heuer (karl@kelp.ima.isc.com or ima!kelp!karl), The Walking Lint