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Re: Empty structures: Legal as GNU extension?
- To: Nathan Myers <ncm at cygnus dot com>
- Subject: Re: Empty structures: Legal as GNU extension?
- From: Horst von Brand <vonbrand at inf dot utfsm dot cl>
- Date: Fri, 07 Aug 1998 08:30:57 -0400
- Cc: egcs at cygnus dot com
Nathan Myers <ncm@cygnus.com> said:
> Horst von Brand wrote:
> > It just so happens that the Linux kernel uses empty structures [...]
[...]
> If support for empty structs isn't documented, it might go away.
That's exactly what I am worried about.
> Empty structs are allowed in Standard C++, but might not be really empty.
> In Egcs-1.1, with -fnew-abi, they are whenever it's allowed. (Two objects
> of the same type can't have the same address, so sometimes padding is
> needed.) Of course this fact isn't very useful for Linux kernel coding
> *quite* yet. Next year, who knows?
If C++ allows the Linux kernel use (which is exactly as you describe), it
should be easy to keep it as a C++-like extension, like inline functions
are. They do share most of their code with C++, don't they? (Yes, I do know
that inline functions are vastly more useful and much harder to do than
what I'm asking for).
--
Dr. Horst H. von Brand mailto:vonbrand@inf.utfsm.cl
Departamento de Informatica Fono: +56 32 654431
Universidad Tecnica Federico Santa Maria +56 32 654239
Casilla 110-V, Valparaiso, Chile Fax: +56 32 797513