[TUHS] Unix stories

[steffen@sdaoden.eu (Steffen Nurpmeso)]

Random832 <random832 at fastmail.com> wrote:
 |On Thu, Feb 9, 2017, at 08:46, Steffen Nurpmeso wrote:
 |> so now i really got this a few minute ago after adding negative
 |> history number support (to count from history top):
 |> 
 |>   tty.c: In function 'c_history':
 |>   tty.c:4157:13: warning: operation on 'entry' may be undefined
 |>   [-Wsequence-point]
 |>          entry = isneg ? --entry : (siz_t)a_tty.tg_hist_size - entry;
 |>          ~~~~~~^~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
 |> 
 |> And in my opinion this is just plain terrible?  I think it is
 ...
 |What's wrong with entry = isneg ? entry-1 : (siz_t)a_tty.tg_hist_size -
 |entry;

Another example:

  spam.c: In function '_spam_rate2score':
  spam.c:1137:38: warning: to be safe all intermediate pointers in cast from 'char **' to 'const char **' must be 'const' qualified [-Wcast-qual]
      ids = n_idec_ui32_cp(&m, buf, 10, (char const**)&buf);

To satisfy we need in fact a temporary variable, since you cannot
apply cast operators on non-lvalues:

  spam.c: In function '_spam_rate2score':
  spam.c:1137:38: error: lvalue required as unary '&' operand
      ids = n_idec_ui32_cp(&m, buf, 10, &(char const*)buf);

And yeah, you need to do something about:

  spam.c: In function '_spam_rate2score':
  spam.c:1137:38: warning: passing argument 6 of 'n_idec_buf' from incompatible pointer type [-Wincompatible-pointer-types]
      ids = n_idec_ui32_cp(&m, buf, 10, &buf);
                                        ^
  nailfuns.h:319:63: note: in definition of macro 'n_idec_ui32_cp'
      n_idec_buf(RP, CBP, UIZ_MAX, B, (n_IDEC_MODE_LIMIT_32BIT), CLP)
                                                                 ^~~
  nailfuns.h:303:22: note: expected 'const char **' but argument is of type 'char **'
   FL enum n_idec_state n_idec_buf(void *resp, char const *cbuf, uiz_t clen,

I would buy that the other way around, i.e., if "buf" would be
constant and the function expects something non-constant.

 |Same number of characters (two more if you put spaces around the minus
 |sign, but hardly a huge burden in any case).

Ok you're right, this special case is not a huge burden.
With a good font l-1-i may also be no problem, but could.  I mean,
some people even use garbage collectors because they are afraid of
memory holes and such, and then such l-1-i problems which are
known to outperform human visual capabilities except at eleven
thirty in the morning are good to go?  This!  Come on.

 |You're basically asking for the standard to carve out an exception for
 |the cases, and precisely only those cases, where the meaning can be seen
 |to be 100% unambiguous (i.e. that the two values being assigned to a
 |variable are provably the same value, and there are no other reads) -
 |which would limit it exclusively to the prefix operator (and assignment
 |operators, I suppose, "x = x += 1" is as unambiguous as it is
 |pointless), and only when there is no other expression involved except
 |for the conditionals (you couldn't have "--entry + x", for example).

Oh yes, i do.  To me the above basically looks like
a reassignment, a creation of a completely new variable.  The
value is assigned after it has been computed.  The compiler may be
clever enough to realize that in certain cases this can end up as
something like "inc eax" or the like.
But all this surely off-topic.

--steffen