Re: [PATCH 0/2] Document void *

["Michael Kerrisk (man-pages)" <mtk.manpages@gmail.com>]

Hi Jonathan!

On 10/2/20 3:19 PM, Jonathan Wakely wrote:
> On Thu, 1 Oct 2020 at 16:51, Alejandro Colomar via Gcc <gcc@gcc.gnu.org> wrote:
>>
>> Hi Michael,
>>
>> On 2020-10-01 17:34, Michael Kerrisk (man-pages) wrote:
>>> Hello Alex,
>>>
>>> On 10/1/20 5:06 PM, Alejandro Colomar wrote:
>>>> Hello Michael,
>>>>
>>>> This type is very special,
>>>> so I will probably have missed some details about it.
>>>
>>> I do wonder if we actually need this in page at all, and given:
>>
>>
>> I think it should be.
>> I would also document 'void', even if it's a bit weird...
>> They are very useful, so why not document them?
> 
> Because the man-pages are not a tutorial for the C language.
> 
> "The Linux man-pages project documents the Linux kernel and C library
> interfaces that are employed by user-space programs."
> 
> void and void* are not APIs.

Agreed, but the rationale of the page is to document topics
that are helpful when using the APIs. And, as I noted already
stuff like 'void *' is borerline, but I think it's helpful
to have some info summarized in one place. And, additionally,
POSIX adds a detail to the C standard (casting between
void * and function pointer).

By the way, thanks for all of your input so far. Among
other things, it made me realize that some navigational
corrections were needed.

Cheers,

Michael


-- 
Michael Kerrisk
Linux man-pages maintainer; http://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/
Linux/UNIX System Programming Training: http://man7.org/training/