Re: [9fans] how to avoid a memset() optimization

["Ronald G. Minnich" <rminnich@lanl.gov>]

On Wed, 13 Nov 2002, rob pike wrote:

> The problem is of course that only curmudgeons like me feel the need;
> everyone else wants the rat's nest, which is why we got it in the first
> place.

I feel the need. Linuxbios no longer works on gcc 3.2 because of some
bizarre optimisations that have gone in that break mptable parsing. One
person claims that you can no longer count on this:

struct x {
	int a;
	int b;
};

resulting in code in which a and b are laid out in memory in the same
order as in the structure (this due to C++). Structure members can get
reordered.

I can't believe this is true, but someone claims it is and I have not had
time to verify it.

People actually ask me, from time to time, why I care that structure
members get laid out as you declare them. !@#$!@#$#@!. Then they say
something like "you should use a systems programing language if you need
that". !@!@#$#!@$#!$#@.

Yep, we need a C that works for its original purpose.

ron