Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!cmcl2!brl-adm!adm!OWENSJ%VTVM1.BITNET@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU
From: OWENSJ%VTVM1.BITNET@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU (John Owens)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: A bad design decision early on in ANSI C.
Message-ID: <11034@brl-adm.ARPA>
Date: 29 Dec 87 19:40:10 GMT
Sender: news@brl-adm.ARPA
Lines: 36

>I would like to suggest removing a "feature" from 'C'.
>
>Structure assignment/passing.
>
>Unless you're going to go all the way and allow structures to be fully first
>class objects (and presumably provide a way to overload operators so you can
>do this meaningfully), it just adds confusion.

I disagree.  I use structure assignment quite often; it's definitely
a useful abstraction.  I think that

        pa[i]->xyz = input_structure

is much clearer than either

        bcopy(&pa[i]->xyz,&input_structure,sizeof(input_structure));

which requires quite a bit of visual decoding (and please, no flames
if I have arguments in the wrong order), or

        pa[i]->xyz.ab_next = input_structure.ab_next;
        pa[i]->xyz.ab_count= input_structure.ab_count;
        pa[i]->xyz.ab_flag = input_structure.ab_flag;
        pa[i]->xyz.ab_name = input_structure.ab_name;
        pa[i]->xyz.ab_used = input_structure.ab_used;

which doesn't make it obvious that all fields are being copied,
is prone to typing errors, and gets even messier if any of the
members are structures themselves....

Besides, I don't think this was introduced in ANSI C - it
certainly exists in a number of non-ANSI C compilers I've used.

        -John Owens                     +1 703 961 7827
        Virginia Tech   Communications Network Services
        OWENSJ@VTVM1.CC.VT.EDU      OWENSJ@VTVM1.BITNET