Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!samsung!uunet!sdrc!scjones
From: scjones@sdrc.UUCP (Larry Jones)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: Bug in DEC's C compiler(s)
Summary: Not a bug, just an old compiler
Message-ID: <1011@sdrc.UUCP>
Date: 3 Jan 90 22:19:15 GMT
References: <1528@utkcs2.cs.utk.edu>
Organization: SDRC, Cincinnati
Lines: 18

In article <1528@utkcs2.cs.utk.edu>, battle@alphard.cs.utk.edu (David Battle) writes:
> I seem to have discovered a bug in DEC's Ultrix C compilers.  The bug
> exhibits itself on both vax and mips architectures.  The problem is that
> it seems to ignore objects declared as "void *".

No, it's not a bug, it's just an old compiler.  When the void
type was originally added to C, the only valid use was as the
return type of a function (no void variables, no arrays of void,
no pointers to void).  The bit pattern corresponding to the
"nonsensical" void * type just happened to be what was used for
undeclared variables, hence the somewhat confusing diagnostic.
----
Larry Jones                         UUCP: uunet!sdrc!scjones
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