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From: peter@citcom.UUCP (Peter Klosky)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.xenix
Subject: Re: What does "Infinite Spill" error message indicate?
Message-ID: <100@citcom.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 14-Oct-87 14:23:37 EDT
Article-I.D.: citcom.100
Posted: Wed Oct 14 14:23:37 1987
Date-Received: Fri, 16-Oct-87 03:18:59 EDT
References: <99@citcom.UUCP>
Organization: Citcom Systems, Inc., Herndon, VA
Lines: 23
Keywords: SCO xenix c language

> We tried compiling a C program which gave the "Infinite Spill"
> compiler error.  Does anyone know what causes this message?

After keeping us waiting for a day or two, SCO got back to us and
we are glad they did; they had seen the problem with the
compiler before and had a work-around ready.  I will try to
summarize the problem in case anyone else runs into it.

The expression in question compiled under 2.1.3 but would not
compile under the new 2.2.0 we bought this month.  According to
SCO tech support, the problem with the C compiler surfaces when
you have a pointer to a structure and try to use an 
integer in the structure to index into an array in the structure.
According to SCO, this problem existed in 2.1.3 but was
repaired in the 2.2.0 release.  Our finding is that the problem
did not exist under 2.1.3 but was introduced as a feature of
the 2.2.0 release.  The work-around is to use a temporary 
variable to store the index, then replace the expression in
the existing statement with the newly introduced temporary 
variable.
-- 
Peter Klosky, Citcom Systems (materiel de telecommunications)
seismo!vrdxhq!baskin!citcom!peter (703) 689-2800 x 235