Re: Word For Today: “Uglification”

Keith Thompson <Keith.S.Thompson+u@gmail.com> writes:
[...]

For context, here's the entire file from my system (Ubuntu 24.0.4,
package libc6-dev:amd64 2.35-0ubuntu3.6).  I get the impression that the
author(s) decided not to use memset to avoid the required #include,
which might increase compilation times for code that indirectly includes
this header.  (I offer no opinion on whether that's a good tradeoff.)

[...]

An older version did use memset().  It was changed to use a loop in
1997, with a commit message that included:
    "Don't use memset to prevent prototype trouble, use simple loop."
It may have been to avoid problems with pre-ANSI C compilers that didn't
support prototypes.  That's still speculation on my part.

--
Keith Thompson (The_Other_Keith) Keith.S.Thompson+u@gmail.com
Working, but not speaking, for Medtronic
void Void(void) { Void(); } /* The recursive call of the void */