Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!munnari.oz.au!metro!pta!mcc!griffon!chris From: chris@%griffon@mcc.oz (Chris Robertson) Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions Subject: Re: What is sin_zero for? Message-ID: <1990Oct22.135045.2633@%griffon@mcc.oz> Date: 22 Oct 90 13:50:45 GMT References: Reply-To: chris@griffon.uucp (Chris Robertson) Distribution: comp Organization: Griffon Consulting Lines: 26 In article jim@cs.strath.ac.uk (Jim Reid) writes: >In article mjd@saul.cis.upenn.edu (Mark-Jason Dominus) writes: > > The defininition of struct sockaddr_in in the > files on our suns has four members, one of which is > char sin_zero[8]; > > What is it for? > >Nothing. It's purely to pad out the sockaddr_in struct to 16 bytes, >the size of the generic sockaddr structure in . > > Jim Actually, it's a little-known fact of Unix history that the "8" in "sin_zero[8]" is really an infinity symbol, placed vertically due to lack of an appropriate ascii character. The significance of all this is although original Unix direct from the Hand of the Creator was pure and without sin, the Berkeley variants took on the knowledge of evil as well as good, thus acquiring Infinite Original Sin... (;-), for the humour-impaired) -- "In the beginning was the Word -- no, just a sec, | Chris Robertson the Byte, no, the Bit... oh hell, forget it!" | chris%griffon@mcc.oz