Re: When did K&R function declarations become obsolete?

From	James Kuyper <jameskuyper@verizon.net>
Newsgroups	comp.lang.c
Subject	Re: When did K&R function declarations become obsolete?
Date	2011-12-11 09:17 -0500
Organization	A noiseless patient Spider
Message-ID	<jc2e1m$jdl$1@dont-email.me> (permalink)
References	<jc082n$27s4$1@colin.muc.de>

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On 12/10/2011 01:23 PM, Alan Mackenzie wrote:
> I think we can say that K&R function declarations are truly obsolete.  In
> ~20 years of hacking C, I've only seen very old code which uses them.
> 
> Presumably these declarations are still widely used in compiler validation
> suites but nowhere else.
> 
> Approximately when did they become obsolete, i.e. not used at all for new
> code?
> 
> [Context: I'm writing documentation for Emacs's C Mode.]

For me personally, non-prototype declarations became (almost) obsolete
as soon as I learned about prototypes, which was shortly after the C
standard was first published. However, many people write code to
standards which require portability to compilers that pre-date the C
standard, even though their code no longer needs to be ported to such
compilers, and hasn't needed such porting for a decade or more.
Therefore, I doubt that they have yet become obsolete in the sense that
you define: "not used at all for new code".

Also, there's still one point where non-prototype function declarations
are useful. Try to declare a prototype for a function taking, as an
argument, a pointer to a function of the SAME type. You'll quickly
discover that the declaration recurses infinitely. Somewhere along the
way, you have to terminate it. There's a number of ways to terminate it,
but the simplest is to use a non-prototype declaration that leaves the
number and type of the parameters unspecified. Other methods, in
principle, run into type compatibility issues if the pointer is actually
used to call a function whose definition uses the same prototype.
-- 
James Kuyper

Thread

When did K&R function declarations become obsolete? Alan Mackenzie <acm@muc.de> - 2011-12-10 18:23 +0000
  Re: When did K&R function declarations become obsolete? Kaz Kylheku <kaz@kylheku.com> - 2011-12-10 18:41 +0000
  Re: When did K&R function declarations become obsolete? 88888 Dihedral <dihedral88888@googlemail.com> - 2011-12-10 10:40 -0800
    Re: When did K&R function declarations become obsolete? Ian Collins <ian-news@hotmail.com> - 2011-12-11 07:49 +1300
    Re: When did K&R function declarations become obsolete? Ben Pfaff <blp@cs.stanford.edu> - 2011-12-10 10:49 -0800
  Re: When did K&R function declarations become obsolete? jt@toerring.de (Jens Thoms Toerring) - 2011-12-10 21:16 +0000
    Re: When did K&R function declarations become obsolete? Alan Mackenzie <acm@muc.de> - 2011-12-12 11:29 +0000
      Re: When did K&R function declarations become obsolete? 88888 Dihedral <dihedral88888@googlemail.com> - 2011-12-12 03:49 -0800
      Re: When did K&R function declarations become obsolete? Ben Bacarisse <ben.usenet@bsb.me.uk> - 2011-12-12 15:04 +0000
        Re: When did K&R function declarations become obsolete? Alan Mackenzie <acm@muc.de> - 2011-12-13 10:42 +0000
          Re: When did K&R function declarations become obsolete? Ben Bacarisse <ben.usenet@bsb.me.uk> - 2011-12-13 13:58 +0000
            Re: When did K&R function declarations become obsolete? "Scott Fluhrer" <sfluhrer@ix.netcom.com> - 2011-12-13 10:17 -0500
              Re: When did K&R function declarations become obsolete? ralph <nt_consulting64@yahoo.net> - 2011-12-13 12:04 -0600
                Re: When did K&R function declarations become obsolete? Kaz Kylheku <kaz@kylheku.com> - 2011-12-13 18:17 +0000
                Re: When did K&R function declarations become obsolete? ralph <nt_consulting64@yahoo.net> - 2011-12-13 15:17 -0600
                Re: When did K&R function declarations become obsolete? Kaz Kylheku <kaz@kylheku.com> - 2011-12-13 21:46 +0000
                Re: When did K&R function declarations become obsolete? Seebs <usenet-nospam@seebs.net> - 2011-12-13 22:04 +0000
                Re: When did K&R function declarations become obsolete? jgk@panix.com (Joe keane) - 2011-12-13 23:07 +0000
                Re: When did K&R function declarations become obsolete? Seebs <usenet-nospam@seebs.net> - 2011-12-13 23:23 +0000
                Re: When did K&R function declarations become obsolete? Kaz Kylheku <kaz@kylheku.com> - 2011-12-14 00:26 +0000
                Re: When did K&R function declarations become obsolete? blp@cs.stanford.edu (Ben Pfaff) - 2011-12-13 15:22 -0800
                Re: When did K&R function declarations become obsolete? Keith Thompson <kst-u@mib.org> - 2011-12-13 15:27 -0800
                Re: When did K&R function declarations become obsolete? Alan Mackenzie <acm@muc.de> - 2011-12-14 09:33 +0000
              Re: When did K&R function declarations become obsolete? Ben Bacarisse <ben.usenet@bsb.me.uk> - 2011-12-13 19:49 +0000
                Re: When did K&R function declarations become obsolete? "Scott Fluhrer" <sfluhrer@ix.netcom.com> - 2011-12-13 14:54 -0500
    Re: When did K&R function declarations become obsolete? luser- -droog <mijoryx@yahoo.com> - 2011-12-20 02:28 -0800
  Re: When did K&R function declarations become obsolete? Keith Thompson <kst-u@mib.org> - 2011-12-10 13:48 -0800
    Re: When did K&R function declarations become obsolete? Keith Thompson <kst-u@mib.org> - 2011-12-10 21:48 -0800
  Re: When did K&R function declarations become obsolete? Ralph Spitzner <rasp@spitzner.org> - 2011-12-11 04:16 +0100
    Re: When did K&R function declarations become obsolete? Keith Thompson <kst-u@mib.org> - 2011-12-10 21:54 -0800
  Re: When did K&R function declarations become obsolete? ralph <nt_consulting64@yahoo.net> - 2011-12-10 22:27 -0600
    Re: When did K&R function declarations become obsolete? Ben Bacarisse <ben.usenet@bsb.me.uk> - 2011-12-11 12:56 +0000
      Re: When did K&R function declarations become obsolete? Eric Sosman <esosman@ieee-dot-org.invalid> - 2011-12-11 09:11 -0500
        Re: When did K&R function declarations become obsolete? ralph <nt_consulting64@yahoo.net> - 2011-12-11 21:40 -0600
          Re: When did K&R function declarations become obsolete? Keith Thompson <kst-u@mib.org> - 2011-12-12 00:05 -0800
            Re: When did K&R function declarations become obsolete? Ben Bacarisse <ben.usenet@bsb.me.uk> - 2011-12-12 15:00 +0000
              Re: When did K&R function declarations become obsolete? 88888 Dihedral <dihedral88888@googlemail.com> - 2011-12-12 07:18 -0800
                Re: When did K&R function declarations become obsolete? Nick Keighley <nick_keighley_nospam@hotmail.com> - 2011-12-13 00:55 -0800
                Re: When did K&R function declarations become obsolete? 88888 Dihedral <dihedral88888@googlemail.com> - 2011-12-13 07:50 -0800
              Re: When did K&R function declarations become obsolete? ralph <nt_consulting64@yahoo.net> - 2011-12-12 11:15 -0600
            Re: When did K&R function declarations become obsolete? ralph <nt_consulting64@yahoo.net> - 2011-12-12 11:17 -0600
              Re: When did K&R function declarations become obsolete? jgk@panix.com (Joe keane) - 2011-12-12 21:57 +0000
                Re: When did K&R function declarations become obsolete? Eric Sosman <esosman@ieee-dot-org.invalid> - 2011-12-12 18:15 -0500
      Re: When did K&R function declarations become obsolete? ralph <nt_consulting64@yahoo.net> - 2011-12-11 15:10 -0600
  Re: When did K&R function declarations become obsolete? James Kuyper <jameskuyper@verizon.net> - 2011-12-11 09:17 -0500
    Re: When did K&R function declarations become obsolete? 88888 Dihedral <dihedral88888@googlemail.com> - 2011-12-11 06:53 -0800
      Re: When did K&R function declarations become obsolete? Keith Thompson <kst-u@mib.org> - 2011-12-12 00:08 -0800
    Re: When did K&R function declarations become obsolete? Alan Mackenzie <acm@muc.de> - 2011-12-12 11:59 +0000
      Re: When did K&R function declarations become obsolete? James Kuyper <jameskuyper@verizon.net> - 2011-12-12 07:47 -0500
        Re: When did K&R function declarations become obsolete? Keith Thompson <kst-u@mib.org> - 2011-12-12 11:59 -0800
          Re: When did K&R function declarations become obsolete? Eric Sosman <esosman@ieee-dot-org.invalid> - 2011-12-12 18:17 -0500
            Re: When did K&R function declarations become obsolete? Keith Thompson <kst-u@mib.org> - 2011-12-12 15:43 -0800
      Re: When did K&R function declarations become obsolete? André Gillibert <MetaEntropy.removeThis@gmail.com> - 2011-12-12 13:49 +0100
        Re: When did K&R function declarations become obsolete? 88888 Dihedral <dihedral88888@googlemail.com> - 2011-12-12 05:25 -0800
          Re: When did K&R function declarations become obsolete? André Gillibert <MetaEntropy.removeThis@gmail.com> - 2011-12-12 14:35 +0100
      Re: When did K&R function declarations become obsolete? Ben Bacarisse <ben.usenet@bsb.me.uk> - 2011-12-12 15:21 +0000
  Re: When did K&R function declarations become obsolete? Jonathan Leffler <jleffler@earthlink.net> - 2011-12-13 22:19 -0800
    Re: When did K&R function declarations become obsolete? Keith Thompson <kst-u@mib.org> - 2011-12-14 02:54 -0800
      Re: When did K&R function declarations become obsolete? 88888 Dihedral <dihedral88888@googlemail.com> - 2011-12-14 13:17 -0800

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