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From: Tim Rentsch <tr.17687@z991.linuxsc.com>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: Regarding assignment to struct
Date: Sun, 04 May 2025 07:49:15 -0700
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Lew Pitcher <lew.pitcher@digitalfreehold.ca> writes:

> Back in the days of K&R, Kernighan and Ritchie published an addendum
> to the "C Reference Manual" titled "Recent Changes to C" (November 1978)
> in which they detailed some differences in the C language post "The
> C Programming Language".
>
> The first difference they noted was that
>   "Structures may be assigned, passed as arguments to functions, and
>    returned by functions."
>
> From what I can see of the ISO C standards, the current C language
> has kept these these features.  However, I don't see many C projects
> using them.
>
> I have a project in which these capabilities might come in handy;  has
> anyone had experience with assigning to structures, passing them as
> arguments to functions, and/or having a function return a structure?
>
> Would code like
>   struct ab {
>     int a;
>     char *b;
>   } result, function(void);
>
>   if ((result = function()).a == 10) puts(result.b);
>
> be understandable, or even legal?

The style is unorthodox, but the code is understandable.

Also it is both legal and well-defined, back to and
including C90.