Orphaned Response

[aglew at ccvaxa.UUCP]

>I was trying to declare "typedef void dead;" so that I could distinguish
>between functions that return nothing (void perror(char *), setbuf(FILE *,
>char *), nullf(void)) from those that don't return (dead exit(int),
>abort(void), longjmp(jmp_buf, int)).  Again, it's a small quibble; I'll
>just use #define instead.
>
>Karl W. Z. Heuer (ihnp4!ima!haddock!karl), The Walking Lint

Good point, though - an optimizing compiler could take advantage of
knowledge that a function doesn't return to do better register allocation,
etc. Should this be in the langauge, or is a convention like

    if( error_condition ) {
	exit(1);
	/*NOTREACHED*/
    }

enough? (Rhetorical question: obviously, you should specify it at the point
of declaration of such a function, not at the point of use.)

Andy "Krazy" Glew. Gould CSD-Urbana.    USEnet:  ihnp4!uiucdcs!ccvaxa!aglew
1101 E. University, Urbana, IL 61801    ARPAnet: aglew at gswd-vms