Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site mit-eddie.UUCP Path: utzoo!linus!decvax!genrad!mit-eddie!wdc From: wdc@mit-eddie.UUCP (William Cattey) Newsgroups: net.bugs.2bsd,net.lang.c Subject: Uses for non-unique names in structures. Message-ID: <1006@mit-eddie.UUCP> Date: Tue, 6-Dec-83 13:35:10 EST Article-I.D.: mit-eddi.1006 Posted: Tue Dec 6 13:35:10 1983 Date-Received: Fri, 9-Dec-83 02:13:15 EST References: <738@garfield.UUCP> <2895@utcsrgv.UUCP> Organization: MIT, Cambridge, MA Lines: 19 It is a neat feature all right, but I hope you never decide to port programs to other C implementations with it present. It is beautiful, and useful, and not portable! The big problem I see with it is that it is such a neat feature that code written with it will get *ugly* when it has to be replaced with a more portable construct. My personal opinion is to use a more portable syntax in the first version and not risk uglification. I believe that C compilers for version 7 and earlier complained about non-unique names for elements in a structure regardless of type. If neither portability nor future uglification matter then use non-unique element names with depraved abandon. Yow! Am I Emily Post yet? :-) W. Cattey. wdc%ccc@mit-mc (arpa) ...decvax!genrad!mit-eddie!wdc (uucp)