Re: [PATCH/coding style] clarify pointers and operators

[Segher Boessenkool <segher@kernel.crashing.org>]

On Wed, Dec 05, 2018 at 11:37:27AM -0600, Segher Boessenkool wrote:
> On Wed, Dec 05, 2018 at 10:04:56AM +0000, Richard Sandiford wrote:
> > Martin Sebor <msebor@gmail.com> writes:
> > > Martin suggested we update the Coding Conventions to describe
> > > the expected style for function declarations with a pointer
> > > return types, and for overloaded operators.  Below is the patch.
> > >
> > > As an aside, regarding the space convention in casts: a crude
> > > grep search yields about 10,000 instances of the "(type)x" kinds
> > > of casts in GCC sources and 40,000 of the preferred "(type) x"
> > > style with the space.  That's a consistency of only 80%.  Is
> > > it worth documenting a preference for a convention that's so
> > > inconsistently followed?
> > 
> > Just to be sure, does that grep include things like the go frontend
> > and its GCC interface, which deliberately don't follow GNU conventions?
> > A crude grep for me gives 92% consistency in gcc/* itself (excluding
> > subdirectories), although that's still disappointingly low...
> 
> I get:
> 
> $ grep '([a-zA-Z_][a-zA-Z0-9_]*)[a-zA-Z_]' *.[ch]|wc -l
> 454
> $ grep '([a-zA-Z_][a-zA-Z0-9_]*) ' *.[ch]|wc -l
> 28690
> 
> (that's gcc/*.[ch]).  About 1.6%, not so terrible.
> 
> $ grep '([a-zA-Z_][a-zA-Z0-9_]*\( \?\*\+\)\?)[a-zA-Z_]' *.[ch]|wc -l
> 631
> $ grep '([a-zA-Z_][a-zA-Z0-9_]*\( \?\*\+\)\?) ' *.[ch]|wc -l
> 29426
> 
> With pointer casts it is worse, but still only about 2.2%.
> 
> Files other than *.[ch] will probably have many more false hits?

Ugh.

$ grep '([a-zA-Z_][a-zA-Z0-9_]*\( \?\*\+\)\?)[a-zA-Z_]' *.[ch]|wc -l
631
$ grep '([a-zA-Z_][a-zA-Z0-9_]*\( \?\*\+\)\?) [a-zA-Z_]' *.[ch]|wc -l
3875

(REs, like all sharp tools, are dangerous).

14%?  Ouch.  And lamely filtering out some comments makes it only worse.


Segher