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From: James Kuyper <jameskuy...@verizon.net>
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Subject: Re: Accessing bit fields of a structure
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Date: Mon, 15 Jun 2009 10:14:33 GMT
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James Dow Allen wrote:
...
> The reason I'm following up is that *I continue to believe*
> that some "C lawyers" insist on coding for compilers that
> are about as real as the Tooth Fairy.

When I write C code, I write it for compilers which conform fully to the 
C standard. I refuse to write C code which make assumptions about 
matters that the C standard leaves unspecified unless they are instead 
specified as part of the requirements for the program I'm writing. Some 
of the assumptions I refuse to make might be violated only by compilers 
no more real than the Tooth Fairy; but that doesn't mean I'm actually 
coding for such compilers. I suspect that such assumptions are rarer 
than you think they are; in many cases, compilers violating the 
assumption are only as unreal as gcc 6.0.0 - i.e. they are compilers 
that haven't been written yet, but might get written before the lifetime 
of my code ends.

I just find it easier to follow a consistent rule, than to evaluate each 
possible deviation from that rule for it's likelihood  of causing problems.