Wolfgang Roemer wrote on 06/10/2005 16:14:03:
> On Thu Oct 06, 2005 14:50, Robert Dewar wrote:
> >> [..]
> >>
> >> I actually disagree with this, I think attempting to make the link
fail
> >> here would be a mistake.
>
> Why do you think that this would be a mistake?
>
I agree with Robert, it would be a mistake. For several reasons:
1. There is code out there that depends on this feature
(e.g. initialization of std::cin and friends).
You don't want to break it.
2. I think that it will break C. As I remember, it is sometimes
legal in C (or in some dialects of C) to have conflicting types.
You may define in one translation unit:
char var[5];
and then go on and define in a different translation unit:
char var[10];
The linker will merge both declarations and allocate at least
10 bytes for 'var' (ld's --warn-common will detect this).
I don't have C99's spec near me so I can't tell if this is really
part of C99 or of some dialect of C.
If the linker only warns on mismatched types it gives users a choice.
A user can choose to run the linker with --fatal-warnings (or
gcc -Wl,--fatal-warnings) and get an error. --fatal-warnings
seems to be gnu-ld's equivalent of gcc's -Werror (at least as I
understand ld's man page).
Michael
