Re: How can Autoconf help with the transition to stricter compilation defaults?

[Paul Eggert]

On 2022-11-12 06:09, Zack Weinberg wrote:

> > -  and ‘false’ work anyway.  This is for compatibility with C 2023 and
> > +  and ‘false’ work anyway.  This is for compatibility with C23 and
>
> Why are you changing four-digit years to two-digit years?
Formerly the Autoconf documentation was inconsistent. In the rest of the 
world people typically write "C89", "C99", "C11", "C17" and "C23" so I 
went with that even though (as you suggest) it will be problematic after 
the year 2088, assuming C is still being standardized after that. I'd be 
happy to change them to "C1989" etc. if preferred. I don't want to use 
the official names; for example, the official name for C17 is "ISO/IEC 
9899:2018" which is far too long, and it doesn't say "C", and it uses 
the "wrong" year number.


> >   All other headers, including all headers
> >   from later revisions of the C standard, need to be tested for
> > +if your program is intended to be portable to C89
> >   (@pxref{Header Files}).
>
> I don’t understand what this addition is supposed to mean.  Not all
> “modern” systems supply all of the C99 headers, even now.

The intent was that if you don't care about C89 any more (which many 
people don't), you needn't worry about checking for headers like 
<stdbool.h> that C99 requires even for freestanding compilers.

Perhaps something like the attached patch?



> > -The C standard says a call @code{malloc (0)} is implementation
> > +The C standard says a successful call @code{malloc (0)} is implementation
> >   dependent.  It can return either @code{NULL} or a new non-null pointer.
>
> Style nit: how can a _call_ be implementation dependent?  Suggest
> something like “The C standard says that _the result of_ a successful
> call _to_ @code{malloc (0)} is implementation dependent.” (underscores
> just to mark additions, not part of suggested text)

That's wordy, and similar wording is repeated elsewhere. How about 
changing it from "a call malloc (0)" to simply "malloc (0)", and 
similarly elsewhere? The shorter string is pretty clear in context.

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