Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!seismo!sundc!pitstop!sun!amdcad!ames!pasteur!ucbvax!ulysses!hector!jss
From: jss@hector.UUCP (Jerry Schwarz)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: "Noalias" warning and questions
Message-ID: <10081@ulysses.homer.nj.att.com>
Date: 15 Feb 88 18:54:57 GMT
References: <8012@elsie.UUCP> <213@sdrc.UUCP>
Sender: netnews@ulysses.homer.nj.att.com
Reply-To: jss@hector (Jerry Schwarz)
Organization: AT&T Bell Labs, Murray Hill
Lines: 19

In article <213@sdrc.UUCP> scjones@sdrc.UUCP (Larry Jones) writes:
>
>The same thing as it does in the "strcmp" declaration - basically nothing.
>It's really only applicable to output arguments but we decided to put it
>on all the library pointers for consistency's sake.

This is false "consistency".  It makes the declarations harder to
read and it is misleading.  When I see a "noalias" I expect that some
aliasing patterns are being prohibited (i.e. result in undefined
behavior).  To gratuitously add "noalias" where no  patterns are
being prohibited can only add to confusion and completely defeats
whatever minor gains in "documentation" you get from adding "noalias"
to declarations of functions like "strcpy".

It would also be consistent (and in my opinion better) to never use
"noalias".

Jerry Schwarz
Bell Labs.