Nick Bowler wrote (on Thu 20-Jun-2013 at 21:45 +0100):
....
> I would only add the extra types if you actually encounter an
> implementation where it matters. Feel free to add an intmax_t
> member to the union as well (after checking for its existence).
The problem I have is that where "it matters" the program would
happily build, but fall over in obscure ways at run-time on some
distant system which happens to be running something out of the
ordinary.
...
> 3) Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good enough.
Something which failed at build-time would indeed be "good enough".
...
> Unfortunately, it's likely the best you can do without something
> like max_align_t, or __BIGGEST_ALIGNMENT__, or whatever.
What I was hoping for was help from Autoconf in identifying where one
of these mechanisms was available. If many/most compilers provide,
say, __BIGGEST_ALIGNMENT__ but some have a different name for it, then
that seems to me something that Autoconf could/should help with.
Where no such mechanism is available, then a compile time error would
tell everybody that some extra work is required... perhaps a -Dbar for
building in some (obscure) environment.
> > Actually, for what I am trying to do, I have decided to fake
> > alignof(). It takes a bit of dicking-about, but it occurred to me
> > that alignof(foo_t) may be constructed as offsetof(struct { char
> > x; foo_t q; }, q)... Sadly gcc throws an unhelpful (in this case)
> > warning... which requires some scrubbing around :-(
> This pattern is essentially the same as how AC_CHECK_ALIGNOF
> actually works. There is also an alignof module in Gnulib
> which may be of interest to you.
Thanks. Happy to see the trick is generally agreed to work :-) It
throws an "anonymous struct declared inside parameter list [enabled by
default]" warning, though :-(
> But I'm not sure this (by itself) helps you, since you'd still need
> a suitable definition of foo_t.
I'm allocating memory for various types en masse. So I malloc enough
for some general red-tape followed by a bunch of items of foo_t -- for
various foo_t. My first thought was to ensure that the red-tape was
__BIGGEST_ALIGNMENT__ aligned. My second thought was to align
sizeof(foo_t) % __BIGGEST_ALIGNMENT__ where that isn't zero. My third
thought was alignof(foo_t).
Thanks,
Chris
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