Functions within structures

[Larry Jones]

In article <14431 at smoke.brl.mil>, gwyn at smoke.brl.mil (Doug Gwyn) writes:
> [ about whether "(*pf)() or (pf)() is more correct ]
> 
> Actually the second one is more "theoretically" correct.  The function
> designator in the first expression is automatically converted to a
> pointer to the function; the second form is already that way.

That depends on which theory you subscribe to.  In classic C, you called
a function -- there was no automatic conversion to a pointer -- and the
first form was thus "theoretically" correct.  The second form was, at
least for some compilers, "completely" wrong -- they refused to generate
code when presented with that construct.

Of course, we all know that you use the address to call a function so
it makes much more sense to say that a call is made using a pointer to
the function and having the name of a function decay into a function
pointer like the name of an array decays into a pointer to the first
element.  That's precisely what X3J11 did, although both decays were
generalize to expressions of the specified type rather than special
casing names.
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