🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1992Sep16.163453.6359@erg.sri.com> hight@sri.com (John Hight) writes:
>Well, I'm getting close to completing installation of 2.2.2 on a
>sparc, but I'm somewhat disturbed by the function prototypes in the
>header files that were installed via "make install-fixincludes".
>Specifically, all the arguments to system functions are encapsulated
>in comments.  Why is this done?

Sun did it; these files are simply copies of the Sun headers with some
errors fixed.  The reason they are commented out is because Sun's bundled
compiler does not know about prototypes.  The Gnu folks didn't write those
files.

Sun charges extra for an ANSI C compiler; the one they give you is an
old-fashioned K&R one with a Reiser-style C preprocessor (see below).

>I certainly do not understand the following section in INSTALL
>describing the installation of corrected header files, specifically
>the second sentence "This behavior".  Can anyone explain this to me,
>with an example?  Is this why all the header files have the arguments
>commented out?  Specifically, what will -traditional do?

|     Various system header files often contain constructs which are
|     incompatible with ANSI C, and they will not work when you compile
|     programs with GNU CC.  This behavior consists of substituting for
|     macro argument names when they appear inside of character
|     constants.  The most common offender is `ioctl.h'.
|
|     You can overcome this problem when you compile by specifying the
|     `-traditional' option.

The so-called "Reiser cpp" would permit macros of the form

#define CONTROL(c) ('c' & 0x1f)

and the c would be substituted, even though it's inside single quotes.
The ANSI C standard says this is illegal.  There are several other forms
of traditional C preprocessor weirdness that are also now forbidden.
Many versions of "ioctl.h" rely on features like these.



--
Joe Buck	jbuck@ohm.berkeley.edu