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From: g-rh@cca.CCA.COM (Richard Harter)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: Another portable code question
Message-ID: <16769@cca.CCA.COM>
Date: Tue, 16-Jun-87 01:42:27 EDT
Article-I.D.: cca.16769
Posted: Tue Jun 16 01:42:27 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 21-Jun-87 05:40:41 EDT
References: <16673@cca.CCA.COM> <1763@ttrdc.UUCP>
Reply-To: g-rh@CCA.CCA.COM.UUCP (Richard Harter)
Organization: Computer Corp. of America, Cambridge, MA
Lines: 31

In article <1763@ttrdc.UUCP> levy@ttrdc.UUCP (Daniel R. Levy) writes:
>< ....
>< (*command)(args);
>< ....
>< One vendor's compiler (I won't name it because I don't have the
>< log sheets at hand) gives a compilation warning for (*command)().
>< (This is a UNIX box.)
>

	As I recall, the warning was to the effect that the * was not
needed.  As to lint.  I trimmed the code -- the actual statement was
of the for 'value = (*command)(args))'.  However lint should not complain
and does not if a function is explicitly or implicitly declared int and
you are consistent either in using or not using the return value.  The
cast to void kludge postdates lint by a fair margin.  I won't say that
there are no version extant of lint that will complain about consistently
ignoring an int return, but I have run on a fair number of machines,
and I haven't seen it.

We don't use void casts or enums as a matter of policy.  We aren't
interested in using pretty little frills that may or may not be
universally available.  Nor are we interested in challenging people's
compilers and discovering the obscure ways they are broken.  Our
coding precepts are very simple -- if there is any prospect that it
might not work on any of the machines that we support, don't use it.
Special cases and non-portability code are too expensive to bother
with.

-- 

Richard Harter, SMDS Inc. [Disclaimers not permitted by company policy.]