Re: [PATCH 1/2] ctime.3: Use VLA notation for [as]ctime_r() buffer

["Alejandro Colomar (man-pages)" <alx.manpages@gmail.com>]

Just forwarding a conversation to the list

On 10/21/21 10:27 AM, Alejandro Colomar (man-pages) wrote:
> Hi Jens,
> 
> On 10/21/21 10:17 AM, Alejandro Colomar (man-pages) wrote:
>> Ideally, the standard and the man-pages would have the same 
>> prototypes.   However, since the standard is not (and cannot be) 
>> perfect, when it has some limitations that it cannot overcome which we 
>> can, I'll be happy to differ from it.  nonnull IMO is very useful in 
>> the SYNOPSIS, so I'd like to have it (and I'd also like the standard 
>> to have it, but that's likely to take a decade, if it happens at 
>> all).  Also, the man-pages already use array notation in some specific 
>> cases (see pipe(2)), and they are mostly targeted at C programmers, so 
>> I think we can safely assume that a C++ reader will know the 
>> limitation of its language, and be able to translate C to C++ easily.  
>> If any glibc programmer has any concerns regarding that, this is the 
>> moment for giving a different opinion :).
> 
> I rethinked it a bit after seeing pipe(2) again.  I never understood why 
> 'static' should be needed at all in an array parameter.  The standard 
> could have also accepted [26] as requiring at least 26 elements in the 
> array, without requiring the use of static.  There may be reasons for 
> that that I ignore, of course; maybe backwards compatibility.... But 
> since the man-pages can present the same information without the static 
> keyword, I'll edit my patches to just use [restrict 26], instead of 
> [static restrict 26], which is more compact.
> 
> BTW, I just noticed that these emails were offlist.  If you want to keep 
> them offlist, I'l do so, but we typically CC the list to have open 
> discussions.  If you give me permission, I'll forward these emails to 
> the mailing lists.
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> Alex
> 


-- 
Alejandro Colomar
Linux man-pages comaintainer; https://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/
http://www.alejandro-colomar.es/