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From: Ben Bacarisse <ben@bsb.me.uk>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: question about linker
Date: Sat, 07 Dec 2024 23:13:38 +0000
Organization: A noiseless patient Spider
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Bart <bc@freeuk.com> writes:

> On 07/12/2024 21:00, David Brown wrote:
>
>> <snip purely subjective opinion on unrealistic code>
>
> You mean that /real/ example where a function needed a type written 6 times
> instead of once? OK.

I've always wondered why prototypes in C did not simply use the existing
syntax for declarations.  After all, it was right there in K&R C, just
outside the parentheses:

f(m, n, s)
int m, n;
char *s;
{ ... }

could have become

f(int m, n; char *s)
{ ... }

rather than

f(int m, int n, char *s)
{ ... }

Does anyone know if there even /was/ a reason?

OK, I know the declarations were not /always/ there.  Implicit int meant
that one could write

f(m, n, s)
char *s;
{ ... }

but that could also have been preserved by allowing

f(m, n; char *s)
{ ... }


-- 
Ben.