Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!csd4.milw.wisc.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!auspex!guy
From: guy@auspex.auspex.com (Guy Harris)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mips
Subject: Re: Bug in the C compiler of UMIPS-BSD
Message-ID: <2290@auspex.auspex.com>
Date: 26 Jul 89 00:28:18 GMT
References: <10249@boulder.Colorado.EDU>
Reply-To: guy@auspex.auspex.com (Guy Harris)
Organization: Auspex Systems, Santa Clara
Lines: 21

>The compiler reports:
>(ccom): foo.c, line 5: ccom: Internal: schain botch
>
>The compiler does accept void * definitions outside of functions.

Interesting.  This seems to confirm my memory that I'd been told, by
somebody who I'd expect to know the answer, that the front end of the
MIPS C compiler was PCC-derived.... 

From a quick look at the 4.xBSD version, and from some experience with
the pre-SunOS 4.0 PCC-derived compiler, this *might* be due to the fact
that PCC didn't syntactically disallow "void *" (in versions with
"void"), and didn't check for it either, but had an internal code for
that type which was the same as some special type value.  The result is
that it got confused at times....

The fix might be to use some value other than the one for "void *" for
said internal code.

(This may or may not be correct; it's largely supplied as a hint as to
where to look.)