On Fri, 2005-10-07 at 08:26 -0400, Richard Kenner wrote: > Personally, I would have not had a DECL_SIZE, i would have made > TYPE_SIZE express the type size properly (IE not always a multiple). > > What is the incredibly good reason we have them both, other than to save > memory in the number of bitfield types we create? > > Because we need to have a way to express the semantic concept of having > an object of the type that has a slightly different representation than > the type. We could do this by making a new type for that object (Ada > does this in some cases) and having conversions all over the place, but > it's a mess.
You keep saying "If we had done this by creating new types, it would be a mess", but what we have *now* is a mess. I seriously doubt the "mess" created by having new types for objects of new sizes would be greater than what we have now.
