Mon, 08 Mar 2010 09:27:34 +0100, grauzone wrote: > Walter Bright wrote: >> bearophile wrote: >>> Walter Bright: >>>> There are significant technical problems with having functions return >>>> tuples.< >>> >>> A possibly stupid question: isn't it enough to return a custom struct? >> >> No, because of the alignment mismatches with other uses of tuples. > > I don't understand, what does alignment have to do with such a high > level construct?
Indeed, to me the tuple is just an interface. The compiler is free to optimize as much as it wants. The operational semantics are quite natural. I hadn't really thought about the systems programming context, but it sounds bad if it breaks the low level bit order in some cases.
