NetNews Offline 2/NetNews Offline Volume 2.iso/news/comp/std/c/770

Internet Message Format | 1996-08-06 | 1.6 KB

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From: [e-mail] (T.E.Dickey)
Newsgroups: comp.std.c
Subject: Re: valueless return statement in non-void function
Date: 20 Apr 1996 11:34:22 GMT
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walter briscoe ([e-mail]) wrote:
: I recently had trouble moving some K&R code to ISO C.
:
: Specifically, a function without a return statement was used to return a
: value with an implicit return at the } terminating the function.
...
: The obvious objection to such a statement is that it conflicts with
: prior art.  I would answer that by making the implicit type of
: declarations void rather than int.  That would allow less unreasonable
: prior art to port without complaint.  I would have implicitly typed
: declarations deprecated in the next revision of the standard to
: facilitate their removal by a further revision.
Several years ago I ran into more than one instance of code that relied
on (some unspecified C compiler) that would return the last declared
variable if no return-value was given -- I assume the committe had that
one in mind, e.g.,

    int foo()
    {
        int x = 4;
        return;    /* implictly returns 4 */
    }

(of course I eradicated it from the code, but it would be interesting
to know whose compiler it was written for ;-)

--
Thomas E. Dickey
[e-mail]