Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!auspex!guy
From: guy@auspex.auspex.com (Guy Harris)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: bigger longs (64 bits)
Message-ID: <2961@auspex.auspex.com>
Date: 22 Feb 90 23:40:20 GMT
References: <11372@attctc.Dallas.TX.US> <194@hico2.UUCP>
Organization: Auspex Systems, Santa Clara
Lines: 11

>Isn't it about time we bit the bullet and decided that the C language needs
>to support types, structures, and ints that look the same from one
>machine to another?  We are only going to network more in the future,
>not less.

I hate to have to break the sad news to you, but size and structure
layout aren't the only issues here.  Byte order is another issue, and
floating-point format is still another.  No matter *how* much we network
in the future, it's not at all clear that the problem can be properly
"fixed" by changing the language so that you can tell compiler to do
things with data structures and members thereof....