ANSI <--> K&R conversion utilities - COMMING SOON

[Marshall Cline]

In article <10311 at socslgw.csl.sony.JUNET> diamond at diamond.csl.sony.junet (Norman Diamond) writes:

>In article <CLINE.89May29171059 at sun.soe.clarkson.edu> cline at sun.soe.clarkson.edu (Marshall Cline) writes:

>>>(4) When converting from ANSI to K&R, the "automatic cast" facilities
>>>    provided by the prototypes would have to be changed to "explicit casts".
>>>    Ex: If "myfunct()" accepts a "long", and "i" is an "int", then the
>>>    ANSI code "myfunct(i)" would have to be translated to "myfunct((long)i)"
>>>    for the K&R compilers.

>In article <229 at pink.ACA.MCC.COM> rfg at pink.aca.mcc.com.UUCP (Ron Guilmette) writes:

>>Who wants to go backwards?

>Anyone who has to use a K&R compiler, e.g. PCC.  Technically this
>doesn't answer the question; this answers "Who HAS to go backwards?"
>Anyway, Mr. Cline is right; the perverse transform is also useful.

Actually, I think going "backwards" will be much more important in a few
years than it is now (think about it -- that sounds "backwards").

The reason is:  Right now we have a higher percentage of K&R code, so most
of our conversion will be K&R --> ANSI.  In a few years (months? days?),
people will be developing good, decent, useful, necessary, exciting things
in ANSI-C.  When this happens, those of us who still use K&R compilers
(which will probably be a lot of us) will have to bring the new code
"backwards" to the K&R style.

In short, if we don't have an _AUTOMATED_TOOL_ to _EFFECTIVELY_ and
_RELIABLY_ convert ANSI to K&R, "for portability's sake" we'll be
tempted to write _everything_ in K&R C, short-circuiting the advantages
of the Standard.

Marshall

PS: I still haven't gotten many e-mail responses.
Anyone have any great ideas, please send them to me -- I'll post results.

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