Re: hunt_victim()

From: Julian Fong (fong@auti6.iitsg.nrc.ca)
Date: 08/16/95


> This is what is known as 'prototyping'.  What this means is you let a 
> function or a file know that an external function exists.  Alternately, 
> you could use:

> void hunt_victim();

> If you change the structure of the parameters anywhere, using this 
> example keeps you from having to redefine prototypes.  This, of course, 
> isn't true if you change the returned data structure or the name.

> It seems obvious to some, not so obvious to others.  It's good you 
> brought that up, however.

I believe using the old style declaration hunt_victim() as a prototype in
spec_procs.c simply to escape warnings is not a good thing. If you screw
up the call of hunt_victim in spec_procs.c (or whereever it's called, not
the file in which it's declared) the compiler can not readily check that
you've passed the correct arguments to hunt_victim since it needs the
prototype to check (although in my experience, it depends on the compiler;
gcc seems to catch most of the screw-ups in cckr declarations). 


Levork, master of the run-on sentence.. *8)



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