Re: [9fans] C compiler question

[Roman V Shaposhnik <rvs@sun.com>]

On Tue, 2009-07-14 at 13:46 -0400, erik quanstrom wrote:
> > rejecting the struct seems like the right thing to do as per
> > ISO/IEC 9899:1999 (http://www.open-std.org/JTC1/SC22/wg14/www/docs/n1124.pdf)
> > sec. 6.7.2.1 para. 2
> >
> > "A structure or union shall not contain a member with incomplete or function type (hence,
> > a structure shall not contain an instance of itself, but may contain a pointer to an instance
> > of itself), except that the last member of a structure with more than one named member
> > may have incomplete array type; such a structure (and any union containing, possibly
> > recursively, a member that is such a structure) shall not be a member of a structure or an
> > element of an array."
>
> you're implying that the point of the plan 9 compilers
> is to toe the c99 line.

For the dirty corner of any language one is usually better off with
a written formal standard. Now, since Plan9 doesn't have such a
document, relying on a work done by c99 committee would seem like
a wise thing to do.

And it is not like we are talking about C++ ISO standard here, the
C99 is actually quite beautiful (except may be a couple of places
like compound literals, and stuff).

What's your problem with such an approach?

> also, a pointer to an incomplete type is used
> in many places in plan 9 libraries.

The above paragraph has nothing to do with pointers to incomplete types
(except for a clarification). Why are you bringing this up?

Thanks,
Roman.