Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!taumet!steve
From: steve@taumet.com (Stephen Clamage)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: passing structures
Message-ID: <473@taumet.com>
Date: 11 Oct 90 15:35:05 GMT
References: <241@motto.UUCP>
Organization: Taumetric Corporation, San Diego
Lines: 22

andrew@motto.UUCP (Andrew Walduck) writes:

|In the new ANSI standard, we can now pass (and return) a structure by
|value. Like so...(fragment follows)

|typedef struct complex { int real; int imag; } complex;
|complex add(complex, complex); /* function prototype for complex add */

|Now, here's the problem...what if I wanted to pass a constant structure
|to add! For example I wanted to add 5+8i to a:

|result = add(a,{5,8});

|But this isn't supported by ANSII! There's no way to pass a structure
|as a parameter!

It was never possible to create such an anonymous structure constant in
Classic C, and is still not possible in ANSI C.  You can however do
this easily in C++, where such things are fully supported.
-- 

Steve Clamage, TauMetric Corp, steve@taumet.com