From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Theodore Ts'o Subject: Re: debugfs: dump a sparse file as a new sparse file Date: Tue, 1 Jan 2013 17:47:40 -0500 Message-ID: <20130101224740.GD12554@thunk.org> References: <20130101205709.GC12554@thunk.org> <20130101212504.11364.qmail@science.horizon.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Cc: gnehzuil.liu@gmail.com, linux-ext4@vger.kernel.org To: George Spelvin Return-path: Received: from li9-11.members.linode.com ([67.18.176.11]:41245 "EHLO imap.thunk.org" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1751051Ab3AAWrp (ORCPT ); Tue, 1 Jan 2013 17:47:45 -0500 Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <20130101212504.11364.qmail@science.horizon.com> Sender: linux-ext4-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: On Tue, Jan 01, 2013 at 04:25:04PM -0500, George Spelvin wrote: > > That's a good enough reason; my only remaining objection is calling it > "a non-standard/non-portable GCC extension". Fair enough. Basically, e2fsprogs is targetting C89, and with the exception of inline functions (which is optional; e2fsprogs will build on compilers which don't handle inline functions, and it's only recently that I switched us over to use C99 inline functions instead of the old gcc's gnu89 inline declarations), as far as I know we're not dependent on any C99 language features. Because I tend to use a very conservative coding standard for porability's sake, I sometimes lose track of what's actually allowed by C99, and what's a GCC extension. BTW, I'll note that in C11 (ISO/IEC 9899:2011), VLA's have been made **optional**. Hence, even for programs targetting C11-compliant compilers, it's still not a good idea to use VLA's in your code if you are striving for maximal portability. Regards, - Ted