Re: question about linker

On 09/12/2024 18:46, Janis Papanagnou wrote:

On 07.12.2024 16:33, Bart wrote:

You're being aggressive.

 Am I?

That and more.

It says something however when I actually believed that that code was
valid, because the compiler appeared to say so.

 Huh?

Yes. I've seen enough jaw-dropping examples of C code that turned out to be legal, that now I wouldn't be surprised at anything.

An unambiguous grammar is something quite essential; how would you
parse code if it were ambiguous?

You can easily parse a language in an ambiguous syntax. For example, if a particular ambiguity is unlikely to arise in practice (maybe it's one of your examples that you say nobody would ever write).

You postulate it as if the grammar were convoluted;

My opinion is that it is. Especially its propensity for using long-winded production terms that look confusingly similar. (Would it have killed somebody to make the names more distinct?)

So you're a parser and you see this:
>
     do ... while
>
How do you know whether that 'while' starts a new nested loop or
terminates this one?

 Because there's the '...' in between that answers that question.

Oh, I see. That answers everything! Including having a '...' that includes statements starting with 'while'.

So you've got it?

It looks like /you/ have now that I've explained it to you.
My opinion about this feature remains the same, that it was a poor design choice. One of dozens of such choices. An unambiguous grammar does not by itself make for a good syntax.
You however seem utterly incapable of criticising C. Could you write an article all about its quirks and gotchas and flaws? I doubt it.
But suppose you do exactly that. What would you then think about those who dismissed it and suggested you are simply too stupid to understand it or are just deliberately making it out to be a lot worse than it is?
Take this well-known gotcha:
     int* p, q r;
You of course would never for one moment think that these were three pointers; if you were to write this, it would be because you /wanted/ the one pointer and two integers!