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From: gwyn@brl-smoke.ARPA (Doug Gwyn )
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: Arrays of Unknown Length in Structures (and sizeof)
Message-ID: <6500@brl-smoke.ARPA>
Date: Fri, 2-Oct-87 16:44:29 EDT
Article-I.D.: brl-smok.6500
Posted: Fri Oct  2 16:44:29 1987
Date-Received: Tue, 6-Oct-87 05:40:43 EDT
References: <243@mit-prep.ARPA> <1044@ius1.cs.cmu.edu> <786@cc5.bbn.com.BBN.COM>
Reply-To: gwyn@brl.arpa (Doug Gwyn (VLD/VMB) <gwyn>)
Organization: Ballistic Research Lab (BRL), APG, MD.
Lines: 23

In article <786@cc5.bbn.com.BBN.COM> keesan@bbn.com (Morris M. Keesan) writes:
>"illegal zero-sized arrays".  The published Draft Standard from X3J11
>introduces this prohibition, and I complained of this in my formal comments.
>(Speaking of formal comments, my form-letter reply says that the committee's
>response will probably be coming in September 1987.  Any update from committee
>members present?  Doug?  Courtney?)

The issue of 0-sized objects has been debated several times by X3J11,
and every time the majority opposes permitting them, even though good
arguments for them have been made.  The analogy to 0-trip loops has
not been sufficiently persuasive, so I doubt any argument will sway
the opponents.

The main use for 0-length arrays seems to be as the last member of a
struct of indefinite length.  Apparently, the committee does not want
to encourage the design of such ugly data structures, but if you
really have to have them, you can use a 1-long array member instead.

The responses to formal public comments (also some of the informal
letters received) are being reviewed this month and MAY finally be
mailed, along with current drafts of the Standard and Rationale, to
correspondents in November.  Every issue raised will have an individual
response, generally with explanation when the idea was not adopted.