🚀 go-pugleaf

walter briscoe (walter@wbriscoe.demon.co.uk) wrote:
: I recently had trouble moving some K&R code to ISO C.
: 
: Specifically, a function without a return statement was used to return a
: value with an implicit return at the } terminating the function.
... 
: The obvious objection to such a statement is that it conflicts with
: prior art.  I would answer that by making the implicit type of
: declarations void rather than int.  That would allow less unreasonable
: prior art to port without complaint.  I would have implicitly typed
: declarations deprecated in the next revision of the standard to
: facilitate their removal by a further revision.
Several years ago I ran into more than one instance of code that relied
on (some unspecified C compiler) that would return the last declared
variable if no return-value was given -- I assume the committe had that
one in mind, e.g.,

	int foo()
	{
		int x = 4;
		return;	/* implictly returns 4 */
	}

(of course I eradicated it from the code, but it would be interesting
to know whose compiler it was written for ;-)

-- 
Thomas E. Dickey
dickey@clark.net