building and analysing C structs with Storable

[Bulat Ziganshin]

Hello John,

Monday, October 15, 2007, 7:51:13 AM, you wrote:

>> >You say "the system's C compiler" as if there was only one.  It's quite
>> >common for UNIXoid systems to have several C compilers installed
>> >simultaneously; and if you use the module corresponding to the wrong
>> >compiler, you get silent data loss.  I wouldn't risk it.
>> 

> Not in general, the exact layout of C structs and whatnot is set forth
> in the ABI spec developed by the chip manufacturer. All compilers must
> follow it or they cannot even use the same libraries. that said, some
> compilers out there do sometimes deviate from the ABI, or allow it as an
> option, but there is generally an accepted ABI for a OS-platform pair.
> Otherwise things like 'libc' would not be abled to be linked against.

> for instance the ABI for x86-64 is here
> http://www.x86-64.org/documentation/abi-0.98.pdf

i bet that this document was written exactly because "old systems"
(read: i386) had so much confusion :))

i definitely know that it was a great problem in win32 compilers


-- 
Best regards,
 Bulat                            mailto:Bulat.Ziganshin at gmail.com