Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!yale!cmcl2!lanl!jlg
From: jlg@lanl.gov (Jim Giles)
Newsgroups: comp.society.futures
Subject: Re: C's sins of commission (was: (pssst...fortran?))
Message-ID: <63644@lanl.gov>
Date: 21 Sep 90 00:00:46 GMT
References: <9009202104.AA21146@raven.pa.dec.com>
Organization: Los Alamos Natl Lab, Los Alamos, N.M.
Lines: 21

From article <9009202104.AA21146@raven.pa.dec.com>, by mwm@DECWRL.DEC.COM (Mike  Meyer, My Watch Has Windows):
> [...]
|> You've as yet to answer my questions about garbage collection, and
|> what constructs would be provided for working with sequences. As an
|> addendum to that list, I'd be interested to know how you would recode
|> the following C sequence with undefined behavior using your proposed
|> constructs so that it would do what it's author intended:
|>
|>       long    word ;
|>       char    *pointer ;
|>
|>       word = '1234' ;
|>       pointer = (char *) word ;
|>       printf("%c %c %c %c\n", pointer++, pointer++, pointer++, pointer++) ;
|>
|> The intent was to determine the byte ordering of the machine the code was
|> running on.

Answered via email.  I can post the answer here if there's any interest.

J. Giles