Re: strftime(3) oddities with %s, %z

[Mouse <mouse%Rodents-Montreal.ORG@localhost>]

>> Unless POSIX was stupid enough to mandate that all-bits-0 is nil for
>> any pointer type and something well-defined for floating-point.
> The former is definetely true.  (Or will be.)

Sad.  Well, their mistake.

> And i think on the TZ list it just came up it is generally true for
> all "modern" machines.

Oh, it is, it is, especially since the current definition of "modern"
seems to be "Linux/x86_64". :-þ

Portability is not - or at least in my opinion should not be - about
"does it run on most machines now" but "will it run on tomorrow's weird
new machine".  This is why I don't generate/parse wire protocol by
overlaying structs onto octet streams.  This is why I don't bzero
structs with pointers and floats, even though every machine I either
use now or expect to use uses all-0-bits for nil pointers and zero
floats.  I want my code to be an instance of "What did you have to do
to port it to the new system?" "We typed `make'.".

Of course, it's not quite that simple in full generality.  But that's
the aspect that I see as relevant to this thread.

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