Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ukma!xanth!kremer
From: kremer@cs.odu.edu (Lloyd Kremer)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: Why does lint complain about this?
Summary: don't depend on prototypes
Message-ID: <8660@xanth.cs.odu.edu>
Date: 27 Apr 89 15:12:24 GMT
References: <75688@ti-csl.csc.ti.com> <1773@ubu.warwick.UUCP>
Organization: Old Dominion University, Norfolk, Va.
Lines: 25


In article <1773@ubu.warwick.UUCP> geoff@cs.warwick.ac.uk (Geoff Rimmer) writes:
>How did people ever survive without function prototypes! :-)

They coded correctly, casting function arguments when necessary.

Prototypes are very helpful in error checking, but it is an unwise practice
to *depend* on the compiler to do your casting for you.  If a function call
would need an explicit cast to work correctly in the absence of a prototype,
then it should have an explicit cast.

One of the more common errors of this type (pun intended) occurs frequently
in UNIX exec calls:

	execl(path, arg0, arg1, arg2, 0);  /* non-portable */

instead of

	execl(path, arg0, arg1, arg2, (char *)0);

-- 
					Lloyd Kremer
					Brooks Financial Systems
					...!uunet!xanth!brooks!lloyd
					Have terminal...will hack!