Re: What is the correct prototype of md_atof?

[Ian Lance Taylor <ian at wasabisystems dot com>]

Kazu Hirata <kazu@cs.umass.edu> writes:

> gas/tc.h has
> 
>   char *md_atof PARAMS ((int what_statement_type, char *literalP, int *sizeP));
> 
> but so many gas/config/tc-*.c has
> 
>   char *
>   md_atof (type, litP, sizeP)
>        int type; <- Notice it's int!!
>        char *litP;
>        int *sizeP;
> 
> I noticed this problem while converting tc-h8300.c into ISO-C.  To me
> "char" seems to be correct here.  What do others think?

Looks like `int' in both places, so what's the problem?

The code uses `int' because in traditional C, with no prototypes, a
char is always promoted to int anyhow.  If you write `char' in a
prototype, but then don't use a prototype when defining the function,
the 'char' in the function definition will be promoted to `int'.
Since the function definition then does not match the prototype, there
is a potential problem.

If we convert to C90 and use a prototype style definition, then we can
safely switch to `char'.

Ian