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From: msb@sq.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: bytes don't fill words
Message-ID: <1987Jan26.132911.9733@sq.uucp>
Date: Mon, 26-Jan-87 13:29:11 EST
Article-I.D.: sq.1987Jan26.132911.9733
Posted: Mon Jan 26 13:29:11 1987
Date-Received: Tue, 27-Jan-87 00:35:56 EST
References: <4603@watmath.UUCP>
Reply-To: msb@sq.UUCP (Mark Brader)
Distribution: comp
Organization: SoftQuad Inc., Toronto
Lines: 23
Checksum: 45763
Summary: Oh yeah?

Ray Butterworth says:
> If it doesn't do so already, the ANSI C standard should explicitly
> state the following:
> 
> 1) BITS_PER_WORD%BITS_PER_BYTE need not necessarily be 0.

On the contrary, and contrary (it seems to me) to Doug Gwyn's earlier
posting (regarding byte-by-byte copying of objects), the Draft states
at section 1.5, page 2, lines 38-39 that:

# Except for bit-fields, objects are composed of contiguous sequences
# of one or more bytes ...

I claim that this is indeed desirable behavior, because it allows
functions such as memcpy() to work predictably.  Certainly it clashes
with architectures like the DECsystem-10's 7-bit chars in a 36-bit word,
but them's the breaks; I suspect that there are no C's now on such machines.

This is rather similar to an article I posted just before USENIX;
I am posting again in case the other one expired before Doug and other
interested parties got back from there.

Mark Brader