Re: [9front] Re: cc: support binary constants and refactor

[qwx@sciops.net]

On Tue Jun 27 14:35:47 +0200 2023, moody@mail.posixcafe.org wrote:
> On 6/27/23 01:26, qwx@sciops.net wrote:
> > Hi all,
> > 
> >> Subject: [PATCH] cc: support binary constants and refactor
> >>
> >>
> >> C23 now specifies 0[bB] binary constants.
> >> In adding these cinap found that the bounds
> >> checking in mpatov() was incorrect, both in
> >> implementation and concept. So instead lets
> >> just accumulate the constant value as we lex.
> >
> > What's the motivation behind adding this?
> 
> I thought they were useful, saw they were being
> standardized, and the code change turned out quite small.
> That's the only reasoning.
[...]
> > Is it just for ports?
> 
> It was not added for any specific port. I added it because I thought they were
> useful.

Thanks; frankly I'm asking because I'm then a bit sceptical as to the
utility of this.  What I mean is that there are plenty of deficiencies
in C, but this seems like minor syntactic sugar; what else is it
alright to add, even if we don't have to care about compatibility etc?
But it's already in the tree, and I guess that's similar to adding
rc(1) features or syntax, and I don't complain about that, so
whatever.  I'm not sure I'm making sense here.


> > Either way, perhaps we should at least update 2c(1) to list
> > this and other non ANSI stuff that may have been added in the past few
> > years (noreturn, #pragma once recently).
> 
> Sure, something can be put in to 2c(1) regarding these, although a
> lot of these details hide out in /sys/src/cmd/cc/c99.

I think it's useful to have an up-to-date document to point to that
lists these kinds of additions.  I could perhaps go through the
changelog and write a patch when I find the time.

Anyway, thanks and cheers,
qwx