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Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!cbatt!ihnp4!alberta!calgary!radford
From: radford@calgary.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: Available no. of registers
Message-ID: <763@vaxb.calgary.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 23-Jan-87 16:52:41 EST
Article-I.D.: vaxb.763
Posted: Fri Jan 23 16:52:41 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 24-Jan-87 19:38:59 EST
References: <3810002@nucsrl.UUCP> <926@mips.UUCP> <759@vaxb.calgary.UUCP> <1029@cuuxb.UUCP>
Organization: U. of Calgary, Calgary, Ab.
Lines: 32
Summary: Is C really THIS bad?!

In article <1029@cuuxb.UUCP>, mwm@cuuxb.UUCP (Marc W. Mengel) writes:
> Unfortunately, you don't have to take the address of a given variable
> to use it, you merely have to take the address of a variable near it
> and add an offset to it.  The way C is defined, this is quite legal.
> 
> For example, suppose I have a function f, declared as follows:
> 	f(p)
> 		struct { int a, b, c; } *p;
> 	{
> 	...
> 	}
> And I call it as follows:
> 	b()
> 	{
> 		int a, b, c;
> 
> 		f( &a );
> 	}
> According to our venerable friends kerningham&ritchie, this is legal;
> it is also used to some great extent in the older (v6 & v7) unix kernels.

I know C is poorly designed, but is it really THIS bad?! Did Kernighan and
Ritchie suffer from this level of brain damage? Does anyone know?

I assume the proposed ANSI standard doesn't countenance this sort of 
behaviour...

Anyway, regardless of what old C manuals said, this is sufficiently 
ridiculous programming that compiler writers should ignore it and 
shoot any programmers who complain.

   Radford Neal