From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Joe Perches Subject: Re: [RFC PATCH - diffstat only] include/net: Remove extern from function prototypes Date: Wed, 24 Jul 2013 18:41:20 -0700 Message-ID: <1374716480.1924.18.camel@joe-AO722> References: <1374602291.3387.17.camel@joe-AO722> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="ISO-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, netdev@vger.kernel.org To: Cong Wang Return-path: In-Reply-To: Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-Id: netdev.vger.kernel.org On Thu, 2013-07-25 at 01:27 +0000, Cong Wang wrote: > On Tue, 23 Jul 2013 at 17:58 GMT, Joe Perches wrote: You dropped the author from the cc list. Always reply to the author. > > Function prototypes don't need to be declared > > extern in .h files. It's assumed by the compiler > > and is as unnecessary as using auto is when > > declaring automatic/local variables in a block. > > > Since we all know this, why bother it? If everyone knew this, new ones wouldn't be added. But a lot are. Removing extern makes prototypes shorter and more readable. More prototypes fit in a single line More arguments fit on a multi-line prototypes. > Having "extern" doesn't harm > readability, instead it probably helps. Sure, just like auto does. Why isn't that used? > > I believe it makes grepping for extern useful as > > all the matches are actual variables and structs. > You need a semantic tool. No, not really. I'm fairly comfortable with spatch. spatch takes a long time to run for a lot of things.