Geir Magnusson Jr. wrote:
> I'm working with Dan's bootVM to get to run on Windows, and have been
> thinking about the use of -fpack-struct vs #pragm pack() vs just not
> packing and writing code that is a little slower, and a little more
I'd dispute that packing always produces faster code, but...
> verbose, but seemingly more robust and maintainable due to less
> information about context needed to avoid surprises.
>
> I've reconfirmed that packing structs is deadly when you want to call
> into standard libs
>
> struct stat foo;
>
> stat("foo.txt", &foo);
>
> does some bizarre things :)
>
> So how do people deal with this these days? I know fashions change,
> and I haven't done C in anger for > 6 years... (I still have the
> shakes when looking at it - I'm past the screaming stage...)
Just use the compiler's default (ANSI) layout behavior, and then
explicitly pack a struct using pragmas only where required -- usually
for layout compatibility with an external binary.
As you illustrate above, packing somebody else's struct definition can
bring you into conflict with their binary's view of the world.
Tim
> geir
>
--
Tim Ellison ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
IBM Java technology centre, UK.
