Messages in this thread |  | | | Date | Mon, 7 Nov 2005 13:36:00 -0600 | | Subject | Re: typedefs and structs [was Re: [PATCH 16/42]: PCI: PCI Error reporting callbacks] | | From | linas <> |
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On Mon, Nov 07, 2005 at 11:02:45AM -0800, Greg KH was heard to remark: > > > I'm not to clear on what "sparse" can do; however, in the good old days, > > gcc allowed you to commit great sins when passing "struct blah *" to > > subroutines, whereas it stoped you cold if you tried the same trick > > with a typedef'ed "blah_t *". This got me into the habit of turning > > all structs into typedefs in my personal projects. Can we expect > > something similar for the kernel, and in particular, should we start > > typedefing structs now? > > No, never typedef a struct. That's just wrong.
Its a defacto convention for most C-language apps, see, for example Xlib, gtk and gnome. Also, "grep typedef include/linux/*" shows that many kernel device drivers use this convention. > gcc should warn you > just the same if you pass the wrong struct pointer
There were many cases where it did not warn (I don't remember the case of subr calls). I beleive this had to do with ANSI-C spec issues dating to the 1990's; traditional C is weakly typed.
Its not just gcc; anyoe who coded for a while eventually discovered that tyedefs where strongly typed, but "struct blah *" were not.
> (and all of your code > builds without warnings, right?)
:-/ Yes, of course.
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