Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!bloom-beacon!gatech!mcnc!rti!xyzzy!meissner
From: meissner@xyzzy.UUCP (Michael Meissner)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: arrays and structures in C
Message-ID: <819@xyzzy.UUCP>
Date: 26 Apr 88 18:57:42 GMT
References: <12983@brl-adm.ARPA> <143@polygen.UUCP>
Reply-To: meissner@xyzzy.UUCP (Michael Meissner)
Organization: Data General (Languages @ Research Triangle Park, NC.)
Lines: 19

In article <143@polygen.UUCP> pablo@polygen.uucp (Pablo Halpern) writes:
| (Every compiler I know of the address of a struct is the same as the address
| of its first element.  dpANS requires this.)
| However, I don't understand your objection to:
| 
| 	pointer = (rather_large_type *) malloc(some_large_integer * 
| 					       sizeof(rather_large_type));
| 
| Which seems the same to me.

No, no, no, no.  A pointer to a structure is not the same as the pointer
to it's first element because the types are different.  If you convert
them to the same type, I would agree then that the pointers are the
same.  On machines which have different representations for pointers
(say a pointer to a word and a pointer to a byte), if the first member
of the structure is a char or char array, the member's address would be
a byte pointer, whereas the structure's address would be a word pointer.
-- 
Michael Meissner, Data General.		Uucp: ...!mcnc!rti!xyzzy!meissner
					Arpa/Csnet:  meissner@dg-rtp.DG.COM