>>> On a not entirely unrelated note, whilst browsing around my new userland, I
>>> read the BSD style guide.  It is not exactly my personal C style, but it's
>>> pretty close, and I'm prepared to adjust.  But why do we dislike ANSI
>>> function definitions, with parameter types in the arglist??  I was brought
>>> up on this (I learnt C from the Que C Quick Reference Guide *shame*
>>> although I did later read K&R on the subject).

>>We'd like to make it possible for NetBSD to be compiled with pre-ANSI
>>compilers.

>Humph.  Why bother?

Can't someone put this into a FAQ?  I've read this whole discussion
thread twice already.

Because bringing up a new port on a foreign machine with a
brain-damaged compiler can be impossible, or at least very difficult,
if you don't do it this way.  Remember, NetBSD is multi-platform, and
tries to make it as easy as possible to port.  Which means building
pieces of the system with someone else's compiler.

>>> Also, although I feel much less strongly about this, why do we not named
>>> parameters in prototypes?  I always feel this makes header files nicely
>>> self-documenting...

>>Possibly for aesthetic reasons.  To not intrude upon the user's
>>namespace, we'd have to prepend underscores to function argument
>>names.

Ditto for this discussion.

There are archives of the NetBSD mailing lists on ftp.netbsd.org.  I'm
sure both of these discussions, in multiple iterations, are there.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
  Michael L. VanLoon                                 michaelv@HeadCandy.com
       --<  Free your mind and your machine -- NetBSD free un*x  >--
     NetBSD working ports: 386+PC, Mac 68k, Amiga, HP300, Sun3, Sun4,
                           DEC PMAX (MIPS), DEC Alpha, PC532
     NetBSD ports in progress: VAX, Atari 68k, others...
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