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From: lvc@danews.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.lang.c
Subject: Sizeof structure members
Message-ID: <148@danews.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 12-Jul-86 22:14:28 EDT
Article-I.D.: danews.148
Posted: Sat Jul 12 22:14:28 1986
Date-Received: Sun, 13-Jul-86 10:17:44 EDT
Distribution: net
Organization: AT&T Bell Labs, Columbus OH
Lines: 22

I recently wrote a program that made use of the utmp structure.
I wanted to define a global character array of the same size as
a member (ut_line) of utmp.  Since the size is wired in as 12
and not #defined (which is what I would have done!), I decided to
define the array as:

char ftty[sizeof getutent()->ut_line];

I didn't want to define a global variable of type 'struct utmp *',
because I didn't need it, and lint would complain because I didn't
use it.  I could declare an external variable of type 'struct utmp *',
that I'd never use, but this seems just as bad as the unused global.

Without getutent() (which is what could happen in similar situations)
I believe I am stuck with either of the above 'solutions'.  Does anyone
know if I'm wrong about this ?  I use Sys 5 Rel 2 Unix.

Thanks,
-- 

Larry Cipriani		AT&T Network Systems
danews!lvc		"Nothing is worse than an itch you can never scratch."