Bug in DEC's C compiler(s)

[Larry Jones]

In article <1528 at utkcs2.cs.utk.edu>, battle at alphard.cs.utk.edu (David Battle) writes:
> I seem to have discovered a bug in DEC's Ultrix C compilers.  The bug
> exhibits itself on both vax and mips architectures.  The problem is that
> it seems to ignore objects declared as "void *".

No, it's not a bug, it's just an old compiler.  When the void
type was originally added to C, the only valid use was as the
return type of a function (no void variables, no arrays of void,
no pointers to void).  The bit pattern corresponding to the
"nonsensical" void * type just happened to be what was used for
undeclared variables, hence the somewhat confusing diagnostic.
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