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From: daniel@cis.ucsc.edu (Daniel Edelson)
Newsgroups: comp.std.c++
Subject: Re: Non-Portable pointer assignment?
Keywords: 'a' and 'ab'
Message-ID: <17163@darkstar.ucsc.edu>
Date: 18 Jun 91 16:15:56 GMT
Sender: usenet@darkstar.ucsc.edu
Organization: UC Santa Cruz
Lines: 38

.Article: 2813 of comp.std.c
.From: hansen@pegasus.att.com (Tony L. Hansen)
.Subject: Re: Non-Portable pointer assignment? 
.Date: 18 Jun 91 15:04:10 GMT
.
.< From: mcdaniel@adi.com (Tim McDaniel)
.< I would have been quite content to have seen the types and sizes of
.< 'xy' and 'x' differ.
.
.C++ has taken this tack: the type of 'x' is char while the type of 'xy' is
.int. It gives very nice properties when dealing with function and operator
.overloading.
.
.					Tony Hansen
.			    hansen@pegasus.att.com, tony@attmail.com
.				att!pegasus!hansen, attmail!tony


Thank you for pointing this out. 
This means that the following program is legal in C++ and
ANSI C, and has different meanings in the two languages.
Am I correct in thinking that a design goal of Bjarne's was
to avoid the possibility of such a program? 
Is that design goal sufficiently important to motivate x3j16
to change the type of 'c' to int?

#include <stdio.h>

int main(void)
{
	printf("%d\n", sizeof('a'));
}


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Daniel Edelson                 |  ``Recycle your garbage. Please don't
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