Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!rutgers!ames!ucbcad!zen!cory.Berkeley.EDU!iverson
From: iverson@cory.Berkeley.EDU (Tim Iverson)
Newsgroups: news.admin
Subject: Re: How (not) to Program in C (was Re: PD C as solution to binary groups)
Message-ID: <3411@zen.berkeley.edu>
Date: Wed, 31-Dec-69 18:59:59 EDT
Article-I.D.: zen.3411
Posted: Wed Dec 31 18:59:59 1969
Date-Received: Sat, 29-Aug-87 03:05:32 EDT
References: <6960@g.ms.uky.edu> <3725@ncoast.UUCP> <2527@whuts.UUCP> <2639@hoptoad.uucp> <1101@laidbak.UUCP> <3367@zen.berkeley.edu> <4261@ncoast.UUCP>
Sender: news@zen.berkeley.edu
Reply-To: iverson@cory.Berkeley.EDU.UUCP (Tim Iverson)
Organization: University of California, Berkeley
Lines: 26

In article <4261@ncoast.UUCP> allbery@ncoast.UUCP (Brandon Allbery) writes:
>As quoted from iverson@cory.Berkeley.EDU (Tim Iverson):
>+---------------
>| [...]  Admittedly I don't often use unions,
>| but occasionaly I found them essential.
>+---------------
>
>Unions -- are NEVER necessary.  The only legal use of a union is to shrink a
>variable which can contain a number of different types of values; a struct
>will work just as well, at a (possibly large) space penalty. [...]

Well, you ate shoe leather on this one.  I had to design a data structure
for a time series where a wasted *byte* meant a wasted 80Mb on disk (that
was not a typo - 80Mb).  In this case, I think you'll agree, unions were
essential.  Sometimes the "possibly large" becomes the "impossibly huge".

As for Standard C Programming, I'm all for it - as long as my code is used
as the standard.  The problem is that every other C programmer feels the
same way about his code.  What we need to do is gang up on one programmer
at a time, ya' know, divide and conquer!  (i.e. let's just drop this
'standard C' nonsense - let the ANSI commitee worry about it.)


- Tim Iverson
  iverson@cory.Berkeley.EDU
  ucbvax!cory!iverson