Re: union type is evil, redux

Dmitry> "Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen(a)xemacs.org&gt; writes: Dmitry> Wow! We have finally started the technical discussion! :-) No, it's been technical all along. It's just that you didn't do the construction I just did for you. I don't know any more about the specific details than you do; Ben's messages have all been public. Dmitry> Well, looking into the C99 I don't see why the union Dmitry> assignment could be a problem. Can you or Ben cite the gcc Dmitry> developers reply, explaining why it is dangerous and not Dmitry> conforming to the C standard? Ah, we agree then. The standard _seems_ to allow our usage, but it doesn't, and nobody (except a language lawyer trying to cover the vendor's ass) can explain why. I say, this is bogus. As for citing the gcc developers, since Ben mentioned "19.13" this would be about 1995. Even if he could find the old message, what it comes down to is a lot of probably useless work for Ben, no matter how you slice it. This is not a profitable way for him to spend his time, at least in his assessment. Ben has a long history of diving into these things once others present evidence and narrow the field of problematic code. I think it's reasonable to presume that his reluctance is a matter of expert judgement, not mere laziness or arrogance, at this point. That's why I asked for a backtrace/bug report, so that _other_ people (not limited to you; me and Mike for sure, presumably Glynn Clements and Valdis Kletnieks, maybe even Martin) can do the work they're requesting to support --use-union-type, and also recognize the "--use-union-type syndrome" when they see the symptoms. -- Institute of Policy and Planning Sciences http://turnbull.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp University of Tsukuba Tennodai 1-1-1 Tsukuba 305-8573 JAPAN Ask not how you can "do" free software business; ask what your business can "do for" free software.