9 Apr
2010
9 Apr
'10
12:15 p.m.
Jeremy C. Reed wrote:
Well I found the ar specification (in ar.5 not ar.1).
struct ar_hdr {
char ar_name[14];
long ar_date;
char ar_uid;
char ar_gid;
int ar_mode;
long ar_size;
};
Simple enough... :-)
This is same as the old ar.c source.
(plus more in the manual page.)
Now my problem is I don't know what "long" or "int" is on the
old PDP-11
/ system 5 this was made on.
An int on the pdp11 is 16 bits, and a long is 32.
Remember? int is whatever size is most convenient for the architecture? :-)
And I read about PDP-11 "middle endianess"
(first time I heard of
"middle").
A mess, but we have to live with it.
In short, the bytes of a long on a PDP11 is likely laid out like this:
3412
So, the 16-bit values are each little-endian, but the 16 bit values as
such, in the 32-bit view, is laid out as big-endian.
Thus middle-endian... :-)
So I had (wrong but gets ar_name and ar_size correct
for my few tests
for the first header but chops two characters into the data section).
struct {
char ar_name[14];
int32_t ar_date;
char ar_uid;
char ar_gid;
uint16_t ar_mode;
uint16_t ar_size;
} ar_buf;
Well I know above is wrong because ar_size and ar_date should be the
same. But I get ar_size correct each time. But it also loses the next
two bytes from the data. So I am guessing I have some endian issue where
I am getting some things reversed.
Any ideas?
As others already said, it's your compiler trying to optimize the
alignments.
One solution (already presented) is to just play with 16-bit values.
You could also explain to the compiler that it shouldn't try to optimize
the alignments, but since you have to deal with the middle-endianess
anyway, you are probably better off just looking at 16-bit values and
combine them into 32-bit values as needed yourself.
Johnny