🚀 go-pugleaf

Hi,

Gcc-2.4.5 aligns character arrays at 8-byte boundaries on the
sparc architecture.

Rms has explained to me that this is not a bug, it is a feature,
since it speeds up strcpy.

He also hinted that I could remove the feature by changing DATA_ALIGNMENT
and CONSTANT_ALIGNMENT. He also hinted that he did not have the time
to explain this any further.

Can someone Please help me to understand the above-mentioned macros,
so I can make this (irksome) feature go away? We have a dire need at
our site not to have the compiler put unrequested holes in the data
it is allocating.

Here is how the macros are defined in gcc-2.4.5/config/sparc/sparc.h:
=======================================================================
/* Make strings word-aligned so strcpy from constants will be faster. */
#define CONSTANT_ALIGNMENT(EXP, ALIGN)  \
  ((TREE_CODE (EXP) == STRING_CST       \
    && (ALIGN) < FASTEST_ALIGNMENT)     \
   ? FASTEST_ALIGNMENT : (ALIGN))

/* Make arrays of chars word-aligned for the same reasons.  */
#define DATA_ALIGNMENT(TYPE, ALIGN)             \
  (TREE_CODE (TYPE) == ARRAY_TYPE               \
   && TYPE_MODE (TREE_TYPE (TYPE)) == QImode    \
   && (ALIGN) < FASTEST_ALIGNMENT ? FASTEST_ALIGNMENT : (ALIGN))
=======================================================================

If I just undefine the DATA_ALIGNMENT macro, will the problem go away?
Can anyone tell me how to make this behavior optional?

Thanks to anyone who can help.

tim werner