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From: edw@ius2.cs.cmu.edu (Eddie Wyatt)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: Function prototypes (was: miscellaneous unrelated stuff)
Message-ID: <1169@ius2.cs.cmu.edu>
Date: Wed, 20-May-87 10:27:19 EDT
Article-I.D.: ius2.1169
Posted: Wed May 20 10:27:19 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 6-Jun-87 12:04:05 EDT
References: <18346@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU> <8042@utzoo.UUCP>
Organization: Carnegie-Mellon University, CS/RI
Lines: 35


  It seems to me that function prototypes violate a basic good
rule about high programming language design which is : avoid having the
user declare the same information more than once.  As I understand,
function declarations are still require in all there entirety. The
same information is presented in function prototypes.   The user
is require to state approximately the same thing twice.  The functionality
of function prototypes is still useful though, to push the information
about a function around to other modules.  

  There is an ugly(?) alternative that will provide the same functionality.
It will remove the burden from the user to the compiler.  A optional approach
is have the compiler generate the function prototype information ahead of
time.  Maybe another preprocessor stage to the compiler.  *.fp files
could automatically be create with all the function prototype information
in them.  The user would have a small task of including the appropriate *.fp
files (not necessarily using #include). If stronger scoping requirements
are needed then maybe a version of import should be adopted.  How about:

	extern foobar() : foobarmodule;
or
	foobar() : foobarmodule;

In which case the user wouldn't have to include any new files since
the information about what new files to use would be in the import from
field of the external statement.

  I haven't worked out all the details to a feature like this.  I'm sure
there are some posible bad interactions between already existing features,
but it's food for thought.

-- 
					Eddie Wyatt

e-mail: edw@ius2.cs.cmu.edu