Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Path: utzoo!henry
From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: ANSI C questions (parameters, structure assignment)
Message-ID: <1990Aug23.154013.28712@zoo.toronto.edu>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
References: <1081.26d26274@desire.wright.edu>
Date: Thu, 23 Aug 90 15:40:13 GMT

In article <1081.26d26274@desire.wright.edu> demon@desire.wright.edu writes:
>	1)	In standard C, when you pass a structure bigger than four
>longwords, is the structure passed as a value parameter, or just a pointer to
>the structure (thus making it a var parameter)?

When you pass a structure, it is passed by value, regardless of size.

>	2)	Are structure assignments allowed only for initializations
>or can I do:
>struct_thing = other_struct_thing;

Yes, you can.

>struct_thing -= still_more_struct;
>struct_thing *= even_more_struct;

No; plain assignment (and the implicit assignments in passing and
returning) are the *only* operators that work on whole structures.
-- 
Committees do harm merely by existing. | Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
                       -Freeman Dyson  |  henry@zoo.toronto.edu   utzoo!henry