Re: [PATCH] Various pages: SYNOPSIS: Use VLA syntax in function parameters

Michael Matz
2022-11-29T14:58:16Z

Hey,

On Tue, 29 Nov 2022, Alex Colomar via Gcc wrote:

> How about the compiler parsing the parameter list twice?

This _is_ unbounded look-ahead. You could avoid this by using "." for
your new syntax. Use something unambiguous that can't be confused with
other syntactic elements, e.g. with a different punctuator like '@' or the
like. But I'm generally doubtful of this whole feature within C itself.
It serves a purpose in documentation, so in man-pages it seems fine enough
(but then still could use a different puncuator to not be confusable with
C syntax).

But within C it still can only serve a documentation purpose as no
checking could be performed without also changes in how e.g. arrays are
represented (they always would need to come with a size). It seems
doubtful to introduce completely new and ambiguous syntax with all the
problems Joseph lists just in order to be able to write documentation when
there's a perfectly fine method to do so: comments.

Ciao,
Michael.