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

[Michael Matz <matz@suse.de>]

Hey,

On Tue, 29 Nov 2022, Alex Colomar via Gcc wrote:

> How about the compiler parsing the parameter list twice?

This _is_ unbounded look-ahead.  You could avoid this by using "." for 
your new syntax.  Use something unambiguous that can't be confused with 
other syntactic elements, e.g. with a different punctuator like '@' or the 
like.  But I'm generally doubtful of this whole feature within C itself.  
It serves a purpose in documentation, so in man-pages it seems fine enough 
(but then still could use a different puncuator to not be confusable with 
C syntax).

But within C it still can only serve a documentation purpose as no 
checking could be performed without also changes in how e.g. arrays are 
represented (they always would need to come with a size).  It seems 
doubtful to introduce completely new and ambiguous syntax with all the 
problems Joseph lists just in order to be able to write documentation when 
there's a perfectly fine method to do so: comments.


Ciao,
Michael.