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### 6. File position not an offset unimplementable

Section: 29.5.3 [fpos] Status: NAD Submitter: Matt Austern Opened: 1997-12-15 Last modified: 2016-08-09

Priority: Not Prioritized

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Discussion:

Table 88, in I/O, is too strict; it's unimplementable on systems where a file position isn't just an offset. It also never says just what `fpos<>` is really supposed to be. [Here's my summary, which Jerry agrees is more or less accurate. "I think I now know what the class really is, at this point: it's a magic cookie that encapsulates an `mbstate_t` and a file position (possibly represented as an `fpos_t`), it has syntactic support for pointer-like arithmetic, and implementors are required to have real, not just syntactic, support for arithmetic." This isn't standardese, of course.]

Rationale:

Not a defect. The LWG believes that the Standard is already clear, and that the above summary is what the Standard in effect says.