Re: [PATCH] Various pages: SYNOPSIS: Use VLA syntax in function parameters

[Alejandro Colomar <alx.manpages@gmail.com>]

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Hi Martin,

On 9/3/22 17:31, Martin Uecker wrote:
> My experience is that if one wants to see something fixed,
> one has to push for it.  Standardization is meant
> to standardize existing practice, so if we want to see
> this improved, we can not wait for this.

I fully agree with you.  I've been ruminating these patches for some time, for 
having some more time to think about them.  Now, I like them enough to push. 
So, after a few minor cosmetic issues detected by some linters, I've pushed the 
changes to document all of man2 and man3 with hypothetical VLA syntax.

Now, I've released man-pages-6.01 very recently (just a few weeks ago), and I 
don't plan to release again in a year or two, so there's time to do the 
implementation in GCC.  From my side, please consider this an ACK or even 
somewhat of a push to get things done in the compiler side of things :)

I'll show here an excerpt of what kind of syntax has been pushed.  Of course, 
there's room for improving/fixing, since it's not seen an official release, but 
for now, this is what's up there:


        int strncmp(const char s1[.n], const char s2[.n], size_t n);

        long mbind(void addr[.len], unsigned long len, int mode,
                   const unsigned long nodemask[(.maxnode + ULONG_WIDTH ‐ 1)
                                                / ULONG_WIDTH],
                   unsigned long maxnode, unsigned int flags);

        int cacheflush(void addr[.nbytes], int nbytes, int cache);


I've shown the three kinds of prototypes that have been changed:

-  Normal VLA; nothing fancy except for the '.'.
-  Complex size expressions.
-  'void *' VLAs (assuming GNU conventions: sizeof(void *)==1).


Cheers,

Alex

-- 
<http://www.alejandro-colomar.es/>

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