Re: technology discussion → does the world need a "new" C ?

On Sat, 6 Jul 2024 21:34:29 -0400, James Kuyper wrote:

On many platforms, if _Alignof(type) is less than the word size, then a
C pointer to that type is implemented as the combination of the machine
address of the correct word, combined with an offset within that word of
the first byte of that object.

Which is a terrific idea, except it cannot be carried to its logical
conclusion (addressing of arbitrarily-aligned dynamically-defined
bitfields) because of the requirement in the C spec that the size of a
“byte” be at least 8 bits.