Re: question about linker

On 29/11/2024 20:35, Keith Thompson wrote:

Bart <bc@freeuk.com> writes:
[...]

C's syntax allows a 14-parameter function F to be declared in the same
statement as a simple int 'i'.

 Yes (except that it's a declaration, not a statement) :
      int i = 42, F(int, int, int, int, int, int, int,
                   int, int, int, int, int, int, int);
 Are you under the impression that anyone here was not already aware of
that?  Would you prefer it if the number of parameters were arbitrarily
restricted to 13?
 Do you think that anyone would actually write code like the above?
 C generally doesn't impose arbitrary restrictions.  Because of that,
it's possible to write absurd code like the declaration above.  99% of
programmers simply don't do that, so it's not a problem in practice.
 

I'd say that F and i are different types! (Actually I wouldn't even
consider F to be type, but a function.)

 Neither F nor i is a type.  i is an object (of type int), and F is a
function (of type int(int, int, int, int, int, int, int, int, int, int,
int, int, int, int)).
 

That F(1, 2, 3.0, "5", "six", seven, ...) might yield the same type as
'i' is irrelevant here.

 It's relevant to the syntax.  i and F can be declared in the same
declaration only because the type of i and the return type of F happen
to be the same.  If F returned void, i and F would have to be declared
separately.
 Which, of course, is a good idea anyway.
 You're posting repeatedly trying to convince everyone that C allows
ridiculous code.  We already know that.  You are wasting everyone's time
telling us something that we already know.  Most of us just don't obsess
about it as much as you do.  Most of us recognize that, however
convoluted C's declaration syntax might be, it cannot be fixed in a
language calling itself "C".
 Most of us here are more interested in talking about C as it's
specified, and actually trying to understand it, than in complaining
about it.
 

Usually, given these declarations:
>
   int A[100]
   int *B;
   int (*C)();
>
people would consider the types of A, B and C to be array, pointer and
function pointer respectively. Otherwise, which of the 4 or 5 possible
types would you say that D has here:
>
   int D[3][4][5];
>
It depends on how it is used in an expression, which can be any of &D,
D, D[i], D[i][j], D[i][j][k], none of which include 'Array' type!

 No, the object D unambiguously has type int[3][4][5]

(So it would have a different type from E declared on in the same declaration:
    int D[3][4][5], E;
? In that case tell that to David Brown!)
You seem have missed the point of my post, which was a reply to David's remark that 'they can't have totally different types' which was in response to my saying that each variable in the same declaration can 'be [of] a totally different type'.
DB is assuming the type of the variable after it's been used in an expression that is fully evaluated to yield its base type. So my A[100] is used as A[i], and D[3][4][5]  is used as D[i][j][k].
But of course they may be evaluated only partially, yielding a range of types.

Would you write "const int F();"?  Or would you omit the "const"?  How
does the fact that "const" is allowed inconvenience you?

It's another point of confusion. In my language I don't treat function declarations like variable declarations. A function is not a variable. There is no data storage associated with it.
In C it is unfortunate, as it makes it hard to trivially distinguish a function declaration (or the start of a function definition) from a variable declaration.