Another C compiler bug

Guy Harris guy at auspex.auspex.com
Sun Jul 22 03:51:00 AEST 1990


>Which means SGI C compiler does not allow void type usage as on other
>systems.

*No* system should let you refer to the non-existent "value" of a "void"
object.

*Any* system that supports "void *" should, however, let you cast a
"void *" to another pointer type.

The program in question is doing the latter, not the former.

As was noted in another posting, there's a bug in the 3.2 C compiler
that causes it not to handle "void *" - I'll bet it was the same bug
that got fixed at Sun for SunOS 4.0; it probably is the same bug if the
front end of the SGI/MIPS C compiler is PCC-based (basically, the
internal code that represents "void *" was originally also the code used
for an internal "no type" indication - "void *" wasn't officially in C,
but PCC didn't detect it or prohibit it; the change is to use a
different code for the "no type" indication). 



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