cottrell@nbs-vms.ARPA (01/08/85)
/* 1) alignment i realize that allowing unaligned struxures may bomb on some machines. my point is: make the programmer add the alignment bytes explicitly if this is so. i know, more work. but this then allows the programmer to take advantage of nonalignment where permissible. i know, non-portable. okay, then allow nonaligned struxures and let the compiler generate shifting/masking code to realign the long int. i know, inefficient. to robert elz: does your compiler *really* align everything (even character data) on longword boundaries? what machine/system? 2) portability as you have guessed by now, things are neither absolutely portable nor absolutely nonportable. it is a spectrum. its either *kinda portable* or *mostly portable* or *barely portable*. welcome to reality. */