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From: willcox@urbana.mcd.mot.com (David A Willcox)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.programmer
Subject: Re: Known Symantec Think C 4.01 bug and work-around
Message-ID: <1417@urbana.mcd.mot.com>
Date: 25 Oct 90 14:19:58 GMT
References: <514@tci.UUCP> <STEVE.90Oct23100517@huxley.huxley.bitstream.com>
Distribution: comp
Organization: Motorola Microcomputer Division, Urbana, IL
Lines: 19

In article <STEVE.90Oct23100517@huxley.huxley.bitstream.com> steve@huxley.huxley.bitstream.com (Steve Stein) writes:

>In all fairness to Symantec, THIS IS NOT A BUG!!! (This is a "feature" of C.)
>C functions may not return structs (ref: Kernighan & Ritchie's "The C 
>Programming Language", Appendix A ("C Reference Manual") Section 8.4: 
>"functions may not return arrays, structures, unions or functions".)

In all fairness to C, your statement is false.  C functions have been
able to return structures for quite some time - I think that every
UNIX compiler I've used since Version 6 days has allowed it.  You're
right, K&R does say that it is illegal, but it is a very common
extension to allow it.

Also, to quote the ANSI C standard (subclause 3.7.1):

    The return type of a function shall be void or an object type
    other than array.

In other words, in ANSI C, returning a structure definitely IS legal.