Is an empty source file allowed?

Article View: comp.std.c

Article #699

#699

From: Norman Diamond
Date: Thu, 28 Sep 1989 07:29

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The grammar given in the standard does not permit an empty source
file.  Strangely enough, a preprocessor source file may be empty,
but since it cannot generate a non-empty real source file, error
detection is only delayed.

However, in 2.1.1.2, phase 2, "A source file that is not empty shall
end in a new-line character, ...."  Why the condition "that is not
empty"?  Did the committee intend to allow an empty source file, but
forgot that somewhere along the way?

-- 
Norman Diamond, Sony Corporation (diamond@ws.sony.junet)
  The above opinions are inherited by your machine's init process (pid 1),
  after being disowned and orphaned.  However, if you see this at Waterloo or
  Anterior, then their administrators must have approved of these opinions.

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Path: arc1-ca.pugleaf.net!utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!wuarchive!brutus.cs.uiuc.edu!ginosko!uunet!kddlab!titcca!sragwa!wsgw!socslgw!diamond
From: diamond@csl.sony.co.jp (Norman Diamond)
Newsgroups: comp.std.c
Subject: Is an empty source file allowed?
Message-ID: <10885@riks.csl.sony.co.jp>
Date: 28 Sep 89 07:29:30 GMT
Reply-To: diamond@ws.sony.junet (Norman Diamond)
Organization: Sony Computer Science Laboratory Inc., Tokyo, Japan
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