UNIX source code errors detected by new C compiler
jim at uw-beaver.UUCP
jim at uw-beaver.UUCP
Sat Jul 16 01:29:46 AEST 1983
Green Hills Software, who markets a optimizing C compiler for
68000's and NSC 16032's, claims to have discovered NUMEROUS errors
in the 4.1 source code. Their compiler barfed on a substantial
portion of the UNIX section 1 and 8 commands, and they feel the
errors detected are real even though they don't appear under the
4.1 C compiler.
But was this lots of different errors, or the same error many times? I
think the problem of code depending on ( *(NULL) == 0 ) is pretty well
known and has been in Unix since the beginning of time. Of course this
wouldn't be caught by a compiler. Less well known is that the current
C language doesn't allow multiple global definitions, but most
compilers allow them and much code depends on them. I think it would
be nice if the compiler would accept multiple globals but issue an
error message so that this usage would go away, much as the '=+'
operator has gone away.
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