Inaky Perez-Gonzalez wrote:
On Tuesday 03 July 2007, Jeff Garzik wrote:
Inaky Perez-Gonzalez wrote:
Access to bitfields are not atomic within the machine int in which they
are stored... you need to "unpack" the values stored in bitfields, even
if they are single-bit bitfields.
Which we do manually when we don't use bitfields. Again, conceptually,
there is no difference.
Practically speaking -- there are differences.
The "manual" method hides nothing from the programmer, while use of
bitfields hides the lack of atomicity.
When you have programmers who make mistakes -- i.e. real humans -- these
things matter.
But overall, it is not any one detail that discourages use of bitfields;
it is the sum of all the reasons. Practical experience, compiler
technology, mistakes made (and not made), all point to avoiding bitfields.
Jeff
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