Anonymous union within struct not in c99?

问题:

here is very simplified code of problem I have:

enum node_type {
    t_int, t_double
};

struct int_node {
    int value;
};

struct double_node {
    double value;
};

struct node {
    enum node_type type;
    union {
        struct int_node int_n;
        struct double_node double_n;
    };
};

int main(void) {
    struct int_node i;
    i.value = 10;
    struct node n;
    n.type = t_int;
    n.int_n = i;
    return 0;
}

And what I don't undestand is this:

$ cc us.c 
$ cc -std=c99 us.c 
us.c:18:4: warning: declaration does not declare anything
us.c: In function ‘main’:
us.c:26:4: error: ‘struct node’ has no member named ‘int_n’

Using GCC without -std option compiles code above without any problems (and the similar code is working pretty well), but it seems that c99 does not permit this technique. Why is it so and is it possible to make is c99 (or c89, c90) compatible? Thanks.

回答1:

Anonymous unions are a GNU extension, not part of any standard version of the C language. You can use -std=gnu99 or something like that for c99+GNU extensions, but it's best to write proper C and not rely on extensions which provide nothing but syntactic sugar...

Edit: Anonymous unions were added in C11, so they are now a standard part of the language. Presumably GCC's -std=c11 lets you use them.

回答2:

I'm finding this question about a year and a half after everybody else did, so I can give a different answer: anonymous structs are not in the C99 standard, but they are in the C11 standard. GCC and clang already support this (the C11 standard seems to have lifted the feature from Microsoft, and GCC has provided support for some MSFT extensions for some time).

回答3:

Well, the solution was to name instance of the union (which can remain anonymous as datatype) and then use that name as a proxy.

$ diff -u old_us.c us.c 
--- old_us.c    2010-07-12 13:49:25.000000000 +0200
+++ us.c        2010-07-12 13:49:02.000000000 +0200
@@ -15,7 +15,7 @@
   union {
     struct int_node int_n;
     struct double_node double_n;
-  };
+  } data;
 };

 int main(void) {
@@ -23,6 +23,6 @@
   i.value = 10;
   struct node n;
   n.type = t_int;
-  n.int_n = i;
+  n.data.int_n = i;
   return 0;
 }

Now it compiles as c99 without any problems.

$ cc -std=c99 us.c 
$ 

Note: I am not happy about this solution anyway.

回答4:

Union must have a name and be declared like this:

union UPair {
    struct int_node int_n;
    struct double_node double_n;
};

UPair X;
X.int_n.value = 12;

回答5:

Another solution is to put the common header value (enum node_type type) into every structure, and make your top-level structure a union. It's not exactly "Don't Repeat Yourself", but it does avoid both anonymous unions and uncomfortable looking proxy values.

enum node_type {
    t_int, t_double
};
struct int_node {
    enum node_type type;
    int value;
};
struct double_node {
    enum node_type type;
    double value;
};
union node {
    enum node_type type;
    struct int_node int_n;
    struct double_node double_n;
};

int main(void) {
    union node n;
    n.type = t_int; // or n.int_n.type = t_int;
    n.int_n.value = 10;
    return 0;
}

回答6:

Looking at 6.2.7.1 of C99, I'm seeing that the identifier is optional:

struct-or-union-specifier:
    struct-or-union identifier-opt { struct-declaration-list }
    struct-or-union identifier

struct-or-union:
    struct
    union

struct-declaration-list:
    struct-declaration
    struct-declaration-list struct-declaration

struct-declaration:
    specifier-qualifier-list struct-declarator-list ;

specifier-qualifier-list:
    type-specifier specifier-qualifier-list-opt
    type-qualifier specifier-qualifier-list-opt

I've been up and down searching, and cannot find any reference to anonymous unions being against the spec. The whole -opt suffix indicates that the thing, in this case identifier is optional according to 6.1.