Meador Inge <mead...@gmail.com> added the comment: On Fri, Sep 30, 2011 at 12:19 PM, Vlad Riscutia <rep...@bugs.python.org> wrote:
> I believe this is the better thing to do rather than detailing how GCC and > MSVC allocated their bitfields because that would just > encourage people to use this feature incorrectly. So clearly documenting how a feature works will cause people to use the feature incorrectly? I think not. In any case, I agree that documenting the low-level specifics of each compiler's algorithm is too much. > Most bugs opened on bit fields are because people are toying with the > underlying buffer and get other results than what they expect. The issues that I have looked at (issue6069, issue11920, and issue11920) all involve fundamental misunderstandings of *how* the structure layout is determined. I don't know if I would generalize these misunderstanding as "toying with the underlying buffer". Some times people need to know the exact layout for proper C interop. In some of the bugs reported folks are casting buffers in an attempt to discover the structure layout since it is not clearly documented. The general content of your patch seems reasonable. I will provide more specific comments shortly. ---------- _______________________________________ Python tracker <rep...@bugs.python.org> <http://bugs.python.org/issue12880> _______________________________________ _______________________________________________ Python-bugs-list mailing list Unsubscribe: http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/python-bugs-list/archive%40mail-archive.com