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From: dhoyt@ux.acs.umn.edu (David Hoyt)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.programmer
Subject: Re: Can I count on any alignment from NewHandle or NewPtr?
Message-ID: <3643@ux.acs.umn.edu>
Date: 21 Mar 91 15:33:02 GMT
References: <12563@goofy.Apple.COM> <7496.27e4a472@cc.curtin.edu.au> <23706@well.sf.ca.us>
Organization: University of Minnesota, Academic Computing Services
Lines: 14

...
  Yes, I have checked the heap for alignment on my '20.  For the most
part things are quad (8 byte) aligned, but there are a few long aligned
blocks too.  That's what made me a bit nervious in the first place.  There
might be a word aligned object somewhere that I'm just missing.

  The responses that I have gotten seem to indicate that I can count on word
alignment (for now), but to count on long alignment would be dangerous
and in any case apple is bound to change things just to be ornery.  I'm
not sure I believe the last one; apple would have to be pretty stupid to
cause nonaligned accesses as it would slow everything down.  But it is possible
to write buggy memory managers.

david | dhoyt@ux.acs.umn.edu