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From: cd@hrc63.co.uk (Colin Denman "GECCL")
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: Overzealous alignment and padding
Summary: external binary formats are not under my control
Message-ID: <539@hrc63.co.uk>
Date: 31 Oct 88 18:32:53 GMT
References: <410@sdrc.UUCP> <7613@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU>
Organization: GEC Hirst Research Centre, Wembley, England.
Lines: 29

In article <7613@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU>, scs@athena.mit.edu (Steve Summit) writes:
> In article <410@sdrc.UUCP> scjones@sdrc.UUCP (Larry Jones) writes:
> >[...]
> 
> As was discussed recently in this newsgroup, you can avoid all
                                                             ^^^
> structure arrangement problems by simply not attempting to
> conform to external binary formats, but by using an external text
> file format instead.  (Efficiency hackers find this solution
> unpalatable, but the parse time and file size issues are often
> not real problems in practice.)

My most frequent problems with  enforced  alignments  occur  with
*hardware*  formats  and  ones over which I have no control. What
external text format do I use for them :->.

If my machine doesn't  have  floating  point  hardware,  I  still
expect  a  worthy  C  implementation  to  simulate  with  loss of
efficiency. Why can't the same attitude be adopted to matters  of
alignments  and  bit-manipulations. It would be neat and portable
if I could express a format (bitfields and  all)  secure  in  the
knowledge  that  the  only  thing  I  loose  is efficiency. If my
solution permits, I can optimise data layouts, but at least I get
something that *works*.

It is not just a problem  for  "efficiency  hackers",  quite  the
opposite.

		Colin J Denman