Re: [PATCH 1/2] system_data_types.7: Document size_t

Michael Kerrisk (man-pages)
2020-09-29T12:42:38Z

Hi Dave,

On Mon, 28 Sep 2020 at 16:15, Dave Martin <Dave.Martin@arm.com> wrote:
>
> On Mon, Sep 28, 2020 at 11:55:08PM +1000, G. Branden Robinson wrote:
> > Hi, Alex!
> >
> > At 2020-09-28T15:48:14+0200, Alejandro Colomar wrote:
> > > > Where does this arbitrary-looking list of headers come from?
> > >
> > > There are two parts: left to the ';', and right to the ';'.
> > >
> > > Left: The canonical C standard header, and the canonical POSIX header,
> > > in alphabetical order.
> > >
> > > Right: All other headers that shall define the header, according to
> > > either the C or the POSIX standards, in alphabetical order.
>
> To clarify, does POSIX _guarantee_ that all of those headers define this
> type? (I admit I'm too lazy to search through the POSIX standard for an
> answer to this).
>
> If not, this list would serve only to legitimise bad habits and it may
> be better to leave it out.

As I think Alex has clarified, the info about headers is being taken from POSIX.

> > That's not a bad scheme but it is not inferable from the current man
> > page text; I almost commented on the inconsistency in one of my earlier
> > messages but deemed it out of scope. Please document it, perhaps in an
> > introductory paragraph at the top of the Description section.
>
> Ack, I think it would be better to state this explicity rather than
> having some terse syntax that people need to understand.

Yes, I think some more explanatory text is probably needed. This page
is still very much a work in progress.

> IIUC, a program intended to be fully portable between C implementations
> must include <stddef.h>, not rely on one of the others.

Just to note a point here: my main concern is portability across POSIX systems.

Thanks,

Michael

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