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From: ked@garnet.berkeley.edu (Earl H. Kinmonth)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: %p and different pointer representations
Message-ID: <21104@agate.BERKELEY.EDU>
Date: 3 Mar 89 03:42:12 GMT
References: <9382@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU> <1089@vicorp.UUCP> <234@mstan.Morgan.COM> <16112@mimsy.UUCP> <9453@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU> <1890@dataio.Data-IO.COM> <928@jhunix.HCF.JHU.EDU> <9765@smoke.BRL.MIL>
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In article <9765@smoke.BRL.MIL> gwyn@brl.arpa (Doug Gwyn (VLD/VMB) <gwyn>) writes:
>In article <928@jhunix.HCF.JHU.EDU> ins_balb@jhunix.UUCP (Andy Matter) writes:

>I don't understand why so many people seem to be concerned about
>packing both object AND function pointers into the same type of
>variable.  (By the way, it CAN be done; use a union.)  What sort
>of program calls for such weirdness, anyway?  The only genuine

It doesn't take a particularly weird program to require this.  Almost any
program that interprets a script containing both function calls and
variables (sym table references) will require this.  The hoc calculator
program in Kernighan/Pike, UNIX PROGRAMMING ENVIRONMENT, requires this.
Any awk like program will require it.  Any script for a spread sheet
that uses functions and variable names will probably require it.  So too
will an editor that allows complex scripts.  Generally such applications
will generate a vector that contains a mix of calls to functions and
objects (pointers to elements in a symbol table).