Using and Porting GNU CC

5.23: Prototypes and Old-Style Function Definitions

GNU C extends ANSI C to allow a function prototype to override a later old-style non-prototype definition. Consider the following example:

/* Use prototypes unless the compiler is old-fashioned.  */
#if __STDC__
#define P(x) x
#else
#define P(x) ()
#endif

/* Prototype function declaration.  */
int isroot P((uid_t));

/* Old-style function definition.  */
int
isroot (x)   /* ??? lossage here ??? */
     uid_t x;
{
  return x == 0;
}

Suppose the type uid_t happens to be short. ANSI C does not allow this example, because subword arguments in old-style non-prototype definitions are promoted. Therefore in this example the function definition's argument is really an int, which does not match the prototype argument type of short.

This restriction of ANSI C makes it hard to write code that is portable to traditional C compilers, because the programmer does not know whether the uid_t type is short, int, or long. Therefore, in cases like these GNU C allows a prototype to override a later old-style definition. More precisely, in GNU C, a function prototype argument type overrides the argument type specified by a later old-style definition if the former type is the same as the latter type before promotion. Thus in GNU C the above example is equivalent to the following:

int isroot (uid_t);

int
isroot (uid_t x)
{
  return x == 0;
}