Re: Whaddaya think?

On 2024-06-17, James Kuyper <jameskuyper@alumni.caltech.edu> wrote:

On 6/16/24 12:20, DFS wrote:

On 6/15/2024 6:22 PM, Keith Thompson wrote:

DFS <nospam@dfs.com> writes:

...

return(0);

>
A minor style point: a return statement doesn't require parentheses.
IMHO using parentheses make it look too much like a function call.  I'd
write `return 0;`, or more likely I'd just omit it, since falling off
the end of main does an implicit `return 0;` (starting in C99).

 
Can't omit it.  It's required by my brain.

I think DFS might mean that they find themselves unable to omit the
unnecessary return 0 statement entirely.

I also hate it; I feel that the implicit return 0 in main is a
misfeature that was added due to caving in to bad programmers.

Making int main(void) { } correct is like legalizing weed.
Potheads are still potheads. Since I'm not one, I write a
return statement in main.

The parentheses you're putting in are completely unrelated to the use of
parentheses in _Generic(), function calls, compound literals,
sizeof(type name), alignof(), _BitInt(), _Atomic(), typeof(),
typeof_unqual(), alignas(), function declarators, static_assert(), if(),
switch(for(), while(), do ... while(), function-like macro definitions
and invocations or cast expressions. In all of those cases, the
parentheses are part of the grammar.

Speaking of while, the do/while construct does not require parentheses
in order to disambiguate anything, since it has a mandatory semicolon.
Yet, it still has them.

There would be no issue with this grammar:

  iteration_statement := 'do' statement 'while' expression ';'

the fragment "'while' expression ';'" is exactly like
"'return' expression ';'".

Obviously, the parentheses are there for consistency with the
top-testing while loop.

It seems that in some people's eyes, the same consistency should extend
to the return statement.

More widespread than that is a practice of always using parentheses
around the argument of sizeof, even if it's an expression and not
a type.

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