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From: karl@haddock.ima.isc.com (Karl Heuer)
Newsgroups: comp.std.c
Subject: Re: Simple questions about array declarations
Message-ID: <16045@haddock.ima.isc.com>
Date: 27 Feb 90 21:36:23 GMT
References: <25E833AA.15362@paris.ics.uci.edu> <12235@smoke.BRL.MIL>
Reply-To: karl@haddock.ima.isc.com (Karl Heuer)
Organization: Interactive Systems, Cambridge, MA 02138-5302
Lines: 16

In article <12235@smoke.BRL.MIL> gwyn@brl.arpa (Doug Gwyn) writes:
>-	static int array7[];    static int array7[3] = { 1,2,3 };
>-	static int array8[3];   static int array8[3] = { 1,2,3 };
>-	static int array9[3];   static int array9[] = { 1,2,3 };
>-	static int array10[];   static int array10[] = { 1,2,3 };
>
>All these are okay.

That's what I thought, too, but when Ron said (in email) that gcc didn't like
them all, I checked the ANS.  3.7.2 says "if the declaration... is a tentative
definition and has internal linkage, the declared type shall not be an
incomplete type".  This seems to make array7 and array10 illegal.

It's also a pretty stupid rule, in my opinion.

Karl W. Z. Heuer (karl@ima.isc.com or harvard!ima!karl), The Walking Lint