Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!hplabs!nsc!pyramid!infmx!mdelaney
From: mdelaney@infmx.UUCP (Mark Delaney)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: unsigned sizeof()
Message-ID: <3417@infmx.UUCP>
Date: 17 Feb 90 02:59:25 GMT
References: <6042@arctic.nprdc.arpa> <12141@smoke.BRL.MIL>
Reply-To: mdelaney@infmx.UUCP (Mark Delaney)
Organization: Informix, Menlo Park, Ca. U.S.A.
Lines: 23

In article <12141@smoke.BRL.MIL> gwyn@smoke.BRL.MIL (Doug Gwyn) writes:
>In article <6042@arctic.nprdc.arpa> stanonik@nprdc.navy.mil (Ron Stanonik) writes:
>>Sorry if this is old news.  It was a surprise to us; ie, sizeof
>>on our suns and vax (4bsd) returns signed.
>
>Well, their C compilers were based on old, decrepit versions of PCC.
>And non-portable programs abound, so you really shouldn't be surprised
>that you encountered one.

We too were surprised when this sizeof() caused problems while porting.
Does anyone know of a product (free or purchased) that runs on SunOS that 
could help in finding these little unportable problems?  I checked in the
fall 1989 edition of Catalyst (catalog of third-party products for Suns),
but didn't find anything helpful.  I use lint, but it doesn't catch the 
sizeof() problem.  I would upgrade to ANSI C but we don't have ANSI C 
compilers on all of the machines we port to.  I heard gcc has some good 
warnings build in; has anyone with gcc found that it catches this problem 
when the warning flag is on.

Oh yea, please don't flame me about good programming practices would solve
this problem.  I try to write portable code, but still some bugs get through.

                                              - Mark Delaney