[ILUG] EU Rejects Patent Software Law - For Now

[Colm MacCarthaigh]

On Fri, Feb 18, 2005 at 12:39:18PM +0000, Bryan O'Donoghue wrote:
> Almost.
> 
> But don't you chaps typecheck ?

Yep, but I know C :) In C, if you don't explicitly set return
types, or argument types two things happen. Firstly int is
the default type. That's why you can write:

main()
{
	return 0;
}

Secondly, if unspecified the type of arguments will default to
whatever is used the first time the compiler encourters a usage.
So if you have:

int somefunction(x, y)
{

}

and then later call it with two "char *", the compiler will give it
those types. I thought this was the best approach, as it's pretty
flexible. The other approach is to use void pointers (which I don't like
but that's for other reasons) and cast at every opportunity.  It works
but it can unreliable. especially if you doing comparisons which use
pointer-arithmetic. The third approach again is to have specific
inline functions for each argument type, but that's exhaustive. And of 
course the simplest approach is to use an argument-type agnostic
pre-processsor macro - which I think you'll find is what I suggested :)

But my god is this getting obscure.

-- 
Colm MacCárthaigh                        Public Key: colm+pgp at stdlib.net