Re: question about linker

On 05.12.2024 01:19, Keith Thompson wrote:

Bart <bc@freeuk.com> writes:

>
Let's put it this way: if somebody asked me what the rule was, I
wouldn't be able to tell them.

 
Probably because there's no single rule.  As I wrote, "{" and "}"
are used in different contexts with different meanings.  [...]

The context in the post was not about the many places where the
braces are used in "C" but was concerning only a very specific
case; mainly an empty statement (terminated by a semicolon) and
an empty block (an empty compound statement). - If that already
confuses him you can imagine what you do when pointing out that
there's yet more uses of braces. :-)

[...]

>
Consistency? I posted a bit of Algol68 the other day; each function
definition needed a semicolon, to separate it from the next.

(In Algol 68 not specifically only function definitions. "Things"
just need separation "to tell them apart". That's quite typical
for [programming] languages.)

 
C is not Algol68.  In C, the syntax of a function definition is such
that they can be appended without ambiguity.  Requiring a semicolon
after each definition would not help anything.  [...]

Any why would one want to introduce an inconsistency here? The
"C" syntax may be disliked but at least it makes sense [here].

Janis