Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!ames!haven!mimsy!chris
From: chris@mimsy.UUCP (Chris Torek)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: Unions
Keywords: What can they be used for?
Message-ID: <14103@mimsy.UUCP>
Date: 21 Oct 88 21:41:38 GMT
References: <322@hrc.UUCP> <2699@hound.UUCP> <976@l.cc.purdue.edu>
Organization: U of Maryland, Dept. of Computer Science, Coll. Pk., MD 20742
Lines: 14

In article <976@l.cc.purdue.edu> cik@l.cc.purdue.edu (Herman Rubin) notes
that unions can be used to escape the type rules when necessary (glad
someone else said it so I did not have to :-) ), and adds:

>One complaint that I have about the C compilers I have used is that they
>do not support register unions.

Nor register structures, for that matter; this is silly.  The compiler
will return a four-byte integer in a register, so why will it not return
a four-byte structure in a register?

There *are* compilers that do it right.  (Does GCC?)
-- 
In-Real-Life: Chris Torek, Univ of MD Comp Sci Dept (+1 301 454 7163)
Domain:	chris@mimsy.umd.edu	Path:	uunet!mimsy!chris