ANSI C prototypes

[Richard Caley]

In article <1906 at necisa.ho.necisa.oz> boyd at necisa.ho.necisa.oz (Boyd Roberts) writes:

    Right on!  The function prototypes are just stupid.  I shouldn't have to go:

	extern gore	*good(const char *vomit);

    to get the functionality of type checking of function arguments.
    The compiler and loader should do it.  


Ok, so what happens to code which never sees the loader?

I want my errors when I compile things, not when some poor guy tries
to use it.

Even in less extreme cases, having the loader do all the checking
would mean you got no error checking until you did a full compile and
link. For even fairly small programs that will be unacceptable ``Well,
yeah, we really do need the cray, we have to recompile the entire
system every three minutes during development.''

Which is not to say that the linker shouldn't _also_ check the types.
So should the run time system and the disc driver, if I had my way :-)

--
rjc at uk.ac.ed.cstr	Paranoid of Leith