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Path: utzoo!watmath!rbutterworth
From: rbutterworth@watmath.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: structure element offsets
Message-ID: <3863@watmath.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 9-Dec-86 13:30:05 EST
Article-I.D.: watmath.3863
Posted: Tue Dec  9 13:30:05 1986
Date-Received: Wed, 10-Dec-86 09:10:51 EST
References: <1096@spice.cs.cmu.edu> <768@nike.UUCP> <3622@watmath.UUCP> <509@brl-sem.ARPA>
Organization: U of Waterloo, Ontario
Lines: 13
Keywords: structure, offset

In article <509@brl-sem.ARPA>, ron@brl-sem.ARPA (Ron Natalie <ron>) writes:
> What malloc provides is a (char *) that can be cast into other pointer
> types.  There is no guarantee that all legitimate pointer values can
> be represented by a (char *) cast of them.  Malloc is one of those very
> machine dependant magic routines that is careful to return very "special"
> character pointers that can be used as other data types, but to imply that
> the compiler always allows character pointers to be used for this mode
> is naive.

K&R must be naive then.  In 14.4 of the appendix:
"It is guaranteed that a pointer to an object of a given size may be
converted to a pointer to an object of a smaller size and back again
without change."