From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: from alt.a-painless.mh.aa.net.uk (alt.a-painless.mh.aa.net.uk [81.187.30.53]) (using TLSv1.2 with cipher ECDHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384 (256/256 bits)) (No client certificate requested) by smtp.subspace.kernel.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id F3CED2512E6 for ; Sat, 10 Jan 2026 22:32:50 +0000 (UTC) Authentication-Results: smtp.subspace.kernel.org; arc=none smtp.client-ip=81.187.30.53 ARC-Seal:i=1; a=rsa-sha256; d=subspace.kernel.org; s=arc-20240116; t=1768084373; cv=none; b=X7xR2I5JHAQ9lNRx6Y/mQh+VSKXLyeD5/oSmvDuB+GuQzyIMDjNuEyrJBHm/hR4Wn3nsRsY2ZNT66dsLclSDd69H6D77zOmLjIwuyi9iMKU/KxofU3nHuhiGwtDYY1NEI8zsDxpzhgOcO9ZD3WVBxrZVLujbbtb4p3I+K4NSqrY= ARC-Message-Signature:i=1; a=rsa-sha256; d=subspace.kernel.org; s=arc-20240116; t=1768084373; c=relaxed/simple; bh=8pF+o5rsKzmaVAjKyRN3vmKhIZ9PrRT+mqOi79UJ2YY=; h=From:To:Cc:Subject:In-Reply-To:References:Date:Message-ID: MIME-Version:Content-Type; b=S51NQi6/YPYwCXOl5o+rqB5PHTlnzuqzT2+RyT42NCbQ5YcNKFg1Cktw65VdsKlS4Lfl+lYqgMmGdQhTwjOQut8sWKSr+t0vvqPppku7UpYAgb/AahJN790vWkICvrue4E6nJIO+7nrpjY/9w1pVwLjATdJtLf1fEyUO0ojXtHA= ARC-Authentication-Results:i=1; smtp.subspace.kernel.org; dmarc=fail (p=none dis=none) header.from=offog.org; spf=none smtp.mailfrom=offog.org; arc=none smtp.client-ip=81.187.30.53 Authentication-Results: smtp.subspace.kernel.org; dmarc=fail (p=none dis=none) header.from=offog.org Authentication-Results: smtp.subspace.kernel.org; spf=none smtp.mailfrom=offog.org Received: from cartman.offog.org ([2001:8b0:83b:b53f::a]) by painless-a.thn.aa.net.uk with esmtps (TLS1.3) tls TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_AES_256_GCM_SHA384 (Exim 4.96) (envelope-from ) id 1vehVo-009MY9-1y; Sat, 10 Jan 2026 22:32:48 +0000 Received: from ats by cartman.offog.org with local (Exim 4.99.1) (envelope-from ) id 1vehVW-000000000iK-3737; Sat, 10 Jan 2026 22:32:30 +0000 From: Adam Sampson To: Alejandro Colomar Cc: linux-man@vger.kernel.org Subject: Re: [PATCH v1 19/25] man/man3type/void.3type: HISTORY: Update first POSIX appearance of void(3type) In-Reply-To: (Alejandro Colomar's message of "Fri, 9 Jan 2026 11:33:58 +0100") References: Date: Sat, 10 Jan 2026 22:32:30 +0000 Message-ID: User-Agent: Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Precedence: bulk X-Mailing-List: linux-man@vger.kernel.org List-Id: List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain Alejandro Colomar writes: > I think 'void*' is important enough that it would be useful to dig in > its history further. Was it an invention of C89? Or was it an > extension in some existing compilers? If the latter, it would be > interesting to document which systems had it before C89. >From evidence in the utzoo Usenet archive, the idea was around before the ANSI C effort. The first mention of "void *" is in November 1982, where Ken Dalka (ihuxe!dalka) observed in net.lang.c that void * was accepted as a type. He didn't say which compiler was being used, but an earlier post said ihuxe "runs USG 4.0 UN*X". The next is from Mary Ann Horton (mark@cbosgd.UUCP) in January 1984, also in net.lang.c, who suggests using "(void *) 0" as a definition of NULL, giving a varargs function with args terminated by NULL as an example. Then in March 1984, Doug Gwyn (gwyn@Brl-Vld.ARPA) says, as part of a discussion about casting the result of malloc in net.unix-wizards: > The C Language Standards Committee was talking about adding > (void *) to the language as a generic pointer type. Perhaps > that will eventually help... It then shows up in various posts in both of those groups throughout 1984, including a summary by Henry Spencer in June 1984 of Larry Rosler's presentation on the ANSI C project at Usenix saying: > II. "void *" is a new kind of pointer, which cannot be dereferenced but > can be assigned to any other type of pointer without a cast. The > idea here is that "char *" is no longer required to be the > "universal" pointer type which can point to anything. So for > example, the declaration of fread earlier really should go: > > extern int fread(void *, int, int, FILE *); > > (People who have machines where all pointers have the same > representation, don't complain. You are lucky. Others aren't.) Thanks, -- Adam Sampson