Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site datagen.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!mgnetp!ihnp4!zehntel!dual!amd!decwrl!decvax!mcnc!philabs!cmcl2!rocky2!datagen!mrm From: mrm@datagen.UUCP Newsgroups: net.lang.c Subject: Re: forward declared structures Message-ID: <77@datagen.UUCP> Date: Sat, 4-Aug-84 09:08:34 EDT Article-I.D.: datagen.77 Posted: Sat Aug 4 09:08:34 1984 Date-Received: Wed, 8-Aug-84 19:12:32 EDT Organization: Data General Distributed Systems, Westborough, MA Lines: 21 The current ANSI draft does allow forward declaration of the pointer of structures, since that is the only way you can build tree and list structures with different typed structures. Even in pascal, which is much stricter about things, had to allow the forward declaration of pointers. However, I believe that when the structure is declared, it must be in the same block as the forward declaration. Also, this forward declaration requires that all structure/union pointers have the same format (or at least occupy the same amount of storage) -- this means on a word-addressing machine (like the DG stuff, DEC-20, UNIVAC, etc.) an implementator cannot make a pointer to a structure which only contains chars be a byte pointer. With regard to ANSI committees requiring large IBM-ish staffs to produce an ANSI compiler, I beleive that most of us are on rather small teams. I ceratainly wouldn't agree to anythi certainly wouldn't agree to anything that required a massive staff (since I only have myself and an employee supporting two compilers). Michael Meissner Data General Corporation ...{ ihnp4, allegra, rocky2 }!datagen!mrm