Re: question about linker

On 01/12/2024 11:34, David Brown wrote:

"int", "void" and "double" are totally different types in my view. "int", "pointer to int", "array of int", "function returning int" all have a relation that means I would not describe them as /totally/ different types - though I would obviously still call them /different/ types.
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What about 'array of int', 'array of double' and 'array of void*'; do they have a relation too?
Your examples, expressed left-to-right, happen to share the last element. They could also share other elements; so what?

Function declarations outside header files are valid, but tend to be
rare in well-written C code.
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 A function definition - as typically written - is also a function declaration.  So presumably you mean non-defining declaration here.
 Some people have a style where they write forward declarations of all functions defined in a C file near the top of the file.  I am not a fan of that myself - especially as over time, this redundant information is rarely kept fully in sync with the rest of the code.

That's a separate problem. But without forward declarations, at some point you're going to add some expression in the middle of the file, but find you're calling a function which is declared later on in the file rather than earlier.
That's not something you want to waste time thinking about.
When I first wrote a big C program, I used a 300-line script to convert a thinly syntax-wrapped version of C, into actual C.
The script also generated an include file of all static function declarations (which was included in this module) and a separate file of exported function  declarations.
Everything was automatically kept in sync.
Now, why can't the language do that?