Newsgroups: comp.std.c
Path: utzoo!henry
From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: a "derived-declarator-type-list" isn't
Message-ID: <1990Oct9.172454.8335@zoo.toronto.edu>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
References: <1990Oct8.000812.24800@zoo.toronto.edu> <14048@smoke.BRL.MIL>
Date: Tue, 9 Oct 90 17:24:54 GMT

In article <14048@smoke.BRL.MIL> gwyn@smoke.BRL.MIL (Doug Gwyn) writes:
>>In several of the subsections of 3.5.4, the result of a particular form
>>of declarator is defined in terms of the result of a simpler form, which
>>is said to supply a type "derived-declarator-type-list T".
>This is nothing more than the introduction of a bound variable "derived-
>declarator-type-list" used in the same manner as the bound variable "T".
>We could have used "X" instead of "derived-declarator-type-list".  There
>is no need to provide a grammatical specification of the phrase, any more
>than there is a need to describe the phrase "T" in the grammar.

The question is, what exactly is the binding of this misleadingly-named
bound variable?  As it turns out, I missed a bit of subtle wording earlier
which does pin this down reasonably well.  I'd still say that this easily
wins the price for the most confusing naming convention in the standard,
now that "top type" is gone, since a d-d-t-l is not a list of derived
declarator types, or of types of any kind.  "X" would have been much better.

(For those who wonder what "top type" was, be glad you don't know.  The
definition in the pre-final drafts was impenetrably obscure and impossible
to figure out unless you already knew what it meant.  It was approximately
what is now called "type category".  It smells to me like the d-d-t-l is
a remnant of the top-type mess.)
-- 
Imagine life with OS/360 the standard  | Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
operating system.  Now think about X.  |  henry@zoo.toronto.edu   utzoo!henry