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([2001:a61:2479:6801:d8fe:4132:9f23:7e8f]) by smtp.gmail.com with ESMTPSA id a10sm399129edu.78.2020.10.03.04.44.14 (version=TLS1_3 cipher=TLS_AES_128_GCM_SHA256 bits=128/128); Sat, 03 Oct 2020 04:44:14 -0700 (PDT) Cc: mtk.manpages@gmail.com, linux-man , GNU C Library , "gcc@gcc.gnu.org" Subject: Re: [PATCH 0/2] Document void * To: Jonathan Wakely , Alejandro Colomar References: <20201001150638.102544-1-colomar.6.4.3@gmail.com> <71c5f264-38f4-18ee-fe96-39aad08c3369@gmail.com> <41affebd-3354-9420-0048-bffd14535e95@gmail.com> From: "Michael Kerrisk (man-pages)" Message-ID: <1363a952-79d5-e41e-652c-14c67ac47a7b@gmail.com> Date: Sat, 3 Oct 2020 13:44:11 +0200 User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:68.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/68.11.0 MIME-Version: 1.0 In-Reply-To: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Language: en-US Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Precedence: bulk List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-man@vger.kernel.org Hi Jonathan! On 10/2/20 3:19 PM, Jonathan Wakely wrote: > On Thu, 1 Oct 2020 at 16:51, Alejandro Colomar via Gcc 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/