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Re: Structure without a tag

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Frederick Williams <freddywilliams@btinternet.com> writes:
> Eric Sosman wrote:
>>      This is usually a Good Thing, because the fact that the two types
>> have the same representation is just a coincidence.  There are many
>> different kinds of things you might represent with a pair of ints:
>> a point in a two-dimensional grid, the scores of each side in a
>> football match, the number of votes for and against a proposed law,
>> the number of axles and weight in tonnes of a truck, ...  Even though
>> both representations consist of two ints, it would probably be a mistake
>> to store a vote tally in the description of a truck!
>
> That seems to me to be strange reasoning; after all, there are many
> different kinds of things you might represent with a single of int: a
> person's height, a person's weight.  It would probably be a mistake to
> store a height in a weight!

Yes, and there are languages that provide exactly that kind of
protection.  C isn't one of them.

You could, however, declare a struct type containing an int:

    struct height { int h; };
    struct weight { int w; };

-- 
Keith Thompson (The_Other_Keith) kst-u@mib.org  <http://www.ghoti.net/~kst>
"We must do something.  This is something.  Therefore, we must do this."
    -- Antony Jay and Jonathan Lynn, "Yes Minister"

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Thread

Structure without a tag Максим Фомин <maxim@maxim-fomin.ru> - 2011-10-15 13:20 -0700
  Re: Structure without a tag Eric Sosman <esosman@ieee-dot-org.invalid> - 2011-10-15 17:16 -0400
    Re: Structure without a tag Frederick Williams <freddywilliams@btinternet.com> - 2011-10-16 15:19 +0100
      Re: Structure without a tag Eric Sosman <esosman@ieee-dot-org.invalid> - 2011-10-16 10:30 -0400
      Re: Structure without a tag Keith Thompson <kst-u@mib.org> - 2011-10-16 13:54 -0700
      Re: Structure without a tag Jorgen Grahn <grahn+nntp@snipabacken.se> - 2011-10-16 22:09 +0000
        Re: Structure without a tag Eric Sosman <esosman@ieee-dot-org.invalid> - 2011-10-16 18:29 -0400
          Re: Structure without a tag "BartC" <bc@freeuk.com> - 2011-10-16 23:55 +0100
            Re: Structure without a tag blp@cs.stanford.edu (Ben Pfaff) - 2011-10-16 17:31 -0700
          Re: Structure without a tag James Kuyper <jameskuyper@verizon.net> - 2011-10-16 20:05 -0400
            Re: Structure without a tag Kaz Kylheku <kaz@kylheku.com> - 2011-10-17 17:02 +0000
              Re: Structure without a tag James Kuyper <jameskuyper@verizon.net> - 2011-10-17 13:53 -0400
                Re: Structure without a tag Robert Wessel <robertwessel2@yahoo.com> - 2011-10-17 13:38 -0500
                Re: Structure without a tag Максим Фомин <maxim@maxim-fomin.ru> - 2011-10-17 22:28 -0700
                Re: Structure without a tag gordonb.b1148@burditt.org (Gordon Burditt) - 2011-10-18 03:04 -0500
                Re: Structure without a tag Nick Keighley <nick_keighley_nospam@hotmail.com> - 2011-10-18 01:37 -0700
                Re: Structure without a tag James Kuyper <jameskuyper@verizon.net> - 2011-10-18 07:10 -0400
                Re: Structure without a tag gwowen <gwowen@gmail.com> - 2011-10-18 08:43 -0700
                Re: Structure without a tag James Kuyper <jameskuyper@verizon.net> - 2011-10-18 11:55 -0400
                Re: Structure without a tag "BartC" <bc@freeuk.com> - 2011-10-18 17:18 +0100
                Re: Structure without a tag Joe Pfeiffer <pfeiffer@cs.nmsu.edu> - 2011-10-18 15:09 -0600
                Re: Structure without a tag Patrick Scheible <kkt@zipcon.net> - 2011-10-18 08:59 -0700
                Re: Structure without a tag James Kuyper <jameskuyper@verizon.net> - 2011-10-18 12:54 -0400
                Attributions (was Re: Structure without a tag) Keith Thompson <kst-u@mib.org> - 2011-10-18 11:48 -0700
                Re: Structure without a tag Stephen Sprunk <stephen@sprunk.org> - 2011-10-18 16:20 -0500
    Re: Structure without a tag Tim Rentsch <txr@alumni.caltech.edu> - 2012-01-24 18:05 -0800
  Re: Structure without a tag Keith Thompson <kst-u@mib.org> - 2011-10-15 16:30 -0700
  Re: Structure without a tag Jean-Christophe <5.d@free.fr> - 2011-10-16 09:54 -0700

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