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From: gwyn@smoke.brl.mil (Doug Gwyn)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: Whose code should we break? ( was Re: 64 bit C )
Message-ID: <15268@smoke.brl.mil>
Date: 20 Feb 91 22:47:15 GMT
References: <11285@pasteur.Berkeley.EDU> <1991Feb20.050525.6515@kithrup.COM> <5768:Feb2020:29:0091@kramden.acf.nyu.edu>
Organization: U.S. Army Ballistic Research Laboratory, APG, MD.
Lines: 18

In article <5768:Feb2020:29:0091@kramden.acf.nyu.edu> brnstnd@kramden.acf.nyu.edu (Dan Bernstein) writes:
>I find it strange that the standard insisted that some integral type be
>big enough for a pointer. That rule is entirely useless without a way to
>figure out what the integral type is.

No, but it does mean that strictly conforming programs should not make
assumptions here.  If you want to print a pointer value as an integer
rather than using %p, I suggest casting it to long (or unsigned long).

%p is better, if you can assume that you have a conforming implementation.

For generic pointer arithmetic, char* is better than any integral type.

>Why did ANSI restrict the
>implementor without giving the programmer anything in return?

Many people wanted such a guarantee.  I agree that it isn't all that
useful in practice.