Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!gatech!hubcap!ncrcae!ncr-sd!hp-sdd!hplabs!hpda!hpcuhb!hpcllla!hpclisp!hpclwjm!walter
From: walter@hpclwjm.HP.COM (Walter Murray)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: Re: ANSI Validation (And Validation in general).
Message-ID: <660057@hpclwjm.HP.COM>
Date: 25 Aug 89 19:05:05 GMT
References: <20500@sequent.UUCP>
Organization: Hewlett-Packard Calif. Language Lab
Lines: 32

Paul Reger writes:

> I was wondering what experiences anyone has had with test suites for
> C.  To date we are using a commercial suite for C but we are finding
> the coverage of it lacks in many areas particulary when it comes to
> 'oddball' expressions found often in kernel code.  For example the
> following code construction:

>     if ((struct xyz *) 0x2000 ->element == 29)

> Is not in the test suite, neither is:

> int
> func(i)
>    register int i;
> {
> ...
>     if (((short) i = f(45)) < 0)
>   /* the line containing the problem... */

It's not clear what you are asking for.  Neither of these constructs
is legal, either by K&R or ANSI C, though I have no doubt there are
some compilers which accept them.  An ANSI-conforming compiler will
be required to produce a diagnostic on a program that contains 
either of these examples.

Are you asking for a validation suite that guarantees that a compiler
will produce the required diagnostic, or do you want it to ensure
that a compiler will actually accept such bogus constructs?

Walter Murray
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