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Path: utzoo!mnetor!yetti!geac!daveb
From: daveb@geac.UUCP (Brown)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c,comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: pointer alignment when int != char *
Message-ID: <1300@geac.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 2-Sep-87 08:40:03 EDT
Article-I.D.: geac.1300
Posted: Wed Sep  2 08:40:03 1987
Date-Received: Thu, 3-Sep-87 04:10:04 EDT
References: <493@its63b.ed.ac.uk> <6061@brl-smoke.ARPA> <3812@spool.WISC.EDU> <588@murphy.UUCP> <26910@sun.uucp>
Reply-To: daveb@geac.UUCP (Dave Collier-Brown)
Organization: The little blue rock next to that twinkly star.
Lines: 25
Xref: mnetor comp.lang.c:4080 comp.unix.wizards:4001

In article <26910@sun.uucp> guy@gorodish.UUCP writes:
>> ...  there should be a way to take any pointer and generate a byte
>> offset from byte 0 in whatever address space the code is running in.  The
>> reason is that you need such a beast to feed to lseek if you want to access
>> something through one of the /dev/mem devices (or maybe /proc).
>
>The standard should NOT address this.  The standard mentions neither "lseek"
>nor "/dev/mem" nor "/proc".  This sort of thing is rather non-portable, and is
>as such completely outside the scope of the standard. 

  I agree that the standard should not address machine-specific issues (and
especially /dev/mem), but the implementors of particular compilers for the
language need to address the question.  (this is more of an arch. than a c
discussion, however).
  The Adavolutians have chosen to relegate the discussion of what optional
features a particular compiler has implemented to a specific appendix: the
standard writers might well define such an appendix for the C language.  It
can then address such issues where the poor client might be able to find it.

  --dave (I once did QA on a compiler: never again) c-b
-- 
 David Collier-Brown.                 {mnetor|yetti|utgpu}!geac!daveb
 Geac Computers International Inc.,   |  Computer Science loses its
 350 Steelcase Road,Markham, Ontario, |  memory (if not its mind)
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