Paul Schauble <Schauble@MIT-MULTICS.ARPA> (01/02/85)
The unaligned type modifier proposed by Joseph Yao already exists in other languages. It is, however, usually taken to be a property of the structure rather than of an individual data type. E.g. struct foo aligned {... This is portable, even to machines that require alignment. It just demands that the compiler generate non-alignment dependant moves to/from an aligned area. This is what the programmer has to do when a truly unaligned structure is needed. !Better the machine do it than me! Hay Committee...Unlike the recent proposal on decimal arithmetic, which I feel does not fit the intent of C as an implementation language, this one does fit. I have frequently needed truly non-aligned structures to communicate with hardware, data files from other machines, etc. I suggest that this get made a standard extension. Paul