Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!think!snorkelwacker!spdcc!ima!haddock!karl
From: karl@haddock.ima.isc.com (Karl Heuer)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: Downward compatible extension to unions
Message-ID: <15957@haddock.ima.isc.com>
Date: 15 Feb 90 22:25:21 GMT
References: <592@dino.cs.iastate.edu>
Reply-To: karl@haddock.ima.isc.com (Karl Heuer)
Organization: Interactive Systems, Cambridge, MA 02138-5302
Lines: 12

In article <592@dino.cs.iastate.edu> hascall@cs.iastate.edu (John Hascall) writes:
>The more I think about the ANSI standard for union initialization, the
>more I fail to understand it.  Was the following suggested...

The problem is that you're thinking in terms of a feature that allows you to
initialize unions.  All that X3J11 really wanted was a way to unambiguously
specify what is the initial value of a static-storage-duration union that is
*not* explicitly initialized.  It happens that their decision also provides a
half-assed way to explicitly initialize *some* unions, but that's pretty much
an unintended side effect.

Karl W. Z. Heuer (karl@ima.ima.isc.com or harvard!ima!karl), The Walking Lint