From: utzoo!decvax!wivax!linus!genradbo!mitccc!zrm
Newsgroups: net.unix-wizards
Title: Returning structures
Article-I.D.: mitccc.226
Posted: Thu Dec 16 21:46:06 1982
Received: Thu Dec 23 21:58:17 1982
References: sri-unix.4840

A blemish on the language C, it is. Can anyone out there think of a
reason one would want to return a structure, much less push such a beast
on a stack? It makes for extra copying and invites disaster in the from
of trying to pass a very large structure, such a whole process (say in a
terminal concentrator system...), or some other very large object that
might be organised as a structure. One exception I can think of might be
a typedef object -- say a Fortranesque complex number.

But outside these rare cases, passing structures sound like very bad
practice. 

Cheers,
Zig