On Thu, Jan 05, 2006 at 02:03:27PM -0800, Paul Eggert wrote: > Because the current convention is to put this declaration in the main > program, at the top level: > > char *program_name; > > Hence the main program has allocated program_name, and has arranged > for it to be initialized to null. If we put a similar declaration in > error.c, it would cause two different definitions of program_name, and > some non-Unix linkers reject this. (The C Standard allows them to > reject it.) > > > (If the interface to it was just set_program_name, it could be private.) > > Yes, that would be a better convention. This will require revamping > pretty much everybody that uses program_name, but I think it's worth > the pain. What do others think?
I'm against it, but not because of the extra work. I don't mind that since the amount of effort is trivial and I can choose when to do it (i.e. I can choose when to reimport gnulib). My problem is that we have changed the interface without making it impossible for the user to use the new interface wrongly. I would prefer an arrangement which results in a compilation or link failure if the user (i.e. software maintainer) fails to initialise things properly. A runtime failure is insufficiently helpful in my opinion. James. _______________________________________________ bug-gnulib mailing list bug-gnulib@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/bug-gnulib
