On Wed Aug 10 11, Bruce Evans wrote: > On Wed, 10 Aug 2011, Alexander Best wrote: > > >On Tue Aug 9 11, Bruce Evans wrote: > >>... > >>What is wrong with the existing APIs TIMEVAL_TO_TIMESPEC() and > >>TIMESPEC_TO_TIMEVAL(), which are used for these conversions by almost > >>everything now? Well, quite a bit is wrong with them, starting with > >>... > > > >any reason {TIMEVAL,TIMESPEC}_TO_{TIMESPEC,TIMEVAL}()s code is being > >executed > >in a > > > >do { ... } while (0) > > > >conditional loop? > > Just the usual syntactical trick for making large macros that look > like function calls almost usable like function calls. Without the > do-while trick, code like > > if (foo) > TIMEVAL_TO_TIMESPEC(&tv, &ts); > > would be fragile at best. With an else clause added to it, it would expand > to either > > if (foo) > first_statement_of_macro; > second_statement_of_macro; ; > else > ... > > which is obviously broken (3 statements between the 'if' and the 'else' > give a syntax error). We partially fix this by putting outer braces in > the macro: > > if (foo) > /* > * Here I attempt to duplicate the ugly indentation, > * that tends to be preserved on expansion, which is > * given by style bugs in the macro definition. See > * sys/queue.h for similar definitions without these > * style bugs. > */ > { > first_statement_of_macro; > second_statement_of_macro; > } ; > else > ... > > This might work without the else clause, but with the else clause it > is still a syntax error, since there are still too many statements > between the 'if' and the 'else' -- we want to add the semicolon after > the macro invocation, since the macro invocation looks like a function > call, but this semicolon gives an extra statement and thus defeats the > reduction to a single statement in the macro be using braces. > > With the trick, and without the style bugs, the above expands to: > > if (foo) > do { > first_statement_of_macro; > second_statement_of_macro; > } while (0) ; > else > ... > > Now there is only 1 statement between the 'if' and the 'else', since we > trickily made the macro a non-statement that works after adding a semicolon > to it -- the semicolon completes the statement, and the do-while is a > trick that works (I don't know of any other). > > >both macros are also defined in crypto/openssh/defines.h and > >don't seem to need that extra one-time-loop. > > Macros that are only used locally can be sloppier, but shouldn't be.
thanks a lot for the in depth information. :) any reason, back in the days, it was decided that the functionality of converting a timespec to a timeval and vice versa should be implemented as a macro and not a function? cheers. alex > > Bruce _______________________________________________ svn-src-head@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/svn-src-head To unsubscribe, send any mail to "svn-src-head-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"