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-rw-r--r--gdb/ChangeLog4
-rw-r--r--gdb/gdbtypes.h38
2 files changed, 27 insertions, 15 deletions
diff --git a/gdb/ChangeLog b/gdb/ChangeLog
index 9b6a825..7be1ebd 100644
--- a/gdb/ChangeLog
+++ b/gdb/ChangeLog
@@ -1,3 +1,7 @@
+2001-09-05 Jim Blandy <jimb@redhat.com>
+
+ * gdbtypes.h (struct type): Doc fix.
+
2001-09-04 Elena Zannoni <ezannoni@redhat.com>
From Daniel Jacobowitz <drow@mvista.com>
diff --git a/gdb/gdbtypes.h b/gdb/gdbtypes.h
index 17f00ce..1e9832c 100644
--- a/gdb/gdbtypes.h
+++ b/gdb/gdbtypes.h
@@ -231,21 +231,29 @@ struct type
char *tag_name;
- /* Length of storage for a value of this type. This is of length
- of the type as defined by the debug info and not the length of
- the value that resides within the type. For instance, an
- i386-ext floating-point value only occupies 80 bits of what is
- typically a 12 byte `long double'. Various places pass this to
- memcpy and such, meaning it must be in units of HOST_CHAR_BIT.
- Various other places expect they can calculate addresses by
- adding it and such, meaning it must be in units of
- TARGET_CHAR_BIT. For some DSP targets, in which HOST_CHAR_BIT
- will (presumably) be 8 and TARGET_CHAR_BIT will be (say) 32,
- this is a problem. One fix would be to make this field in bits
- (requiring that it always be a multiple of HOST_CHAR_BIT and
- TARGET_CHAR_BIT)--the other choice would be to make it
- consistently in units of HOST_CHAR_BIT. */
-
+ /* Length of storage for a value of this type. This is what
+ sizeof(type) would return; use it for address arithmetic,
+ memory reads and writes, etc. This size includes padding. For
+ example, an i386 extended-precision floating point value really
+ only occupies ten bytes, but most ABI's declare its size to be
+ 12 bytes, to preserve alignment. A `struct type' representing
+ such a floating-point type would have a `length' value of 12,
+ even though the last two bytes are unused.
+
+ There's a bit of a host/target mess here, if you're concerned
+ about machines whose bytes aren't eight bits long, or who don't
+ have byte-addressed memory. Various places pass this to memcpy
+ and such, meaning it must be in units of host bytes. Various
+ other places expect they can calculate addresses by adding it
+ and such, meaning it must be in units of target bytes. For
+ some DSP targets, in which HOST_CHAR_BIT will (presumably) be 8
+ and TARGET_CHAR_BIT will be (say) 32, this is a problem.
+
+ One fix would be to make this field in bits (requiring that it
+ always be a multiple of HOST_CHAR_BIT and TARGET_CHAR_BIT) ---
+ the other choice would be to make it consistently in units of
+ HOST_CHAR_BIT. However, this would still fail to address
+ machines based on a ternary or decimal representation. */
unsigned length;
/* FIXME, these should probably be restricted to a Fortran-specific