Hi Jonathan,
On 2020-10-02 15:27, Jonathan Wakely wrote:
On Fri, 2 Oct 2020 at 14:20, Alejandro Colomar <colomar.6.4.3@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On 2020-10-02 15:06, Jonathan Wakely wrote:
> On Fri, 2 Oct 2020 at 12:31, Michael Kerrisk (man-pages)
> <mtk.manpages@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>>
>> On Fri, 2 Oct 2020 at 12:49, Jonathan Wakely <jwakely.gcc@xxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
>>>
>>> On Fri, 2 Oct 2020 at 09:28, Alejandro Colomar via Gcc
<gcc@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>>>> However, it might be good that someone starts a page called
>>>> 'type_qualifiers(7)' or something like that.
>>>
>>> Who is this for? Who is trying to learn C from man pages? Should
>>> somebody stop them?
>>
>> Yes, I think so. To add context, Alex has been doing a lot of work to
>> build up the new system_data_types(7) page [1], which I think is
>> especially useful for the POSIX system data types that are used with
>> various APIs.
>
> It's definitely useful for types like struct siginfo_t and struct
> timeval, which aren't in C.
Hi Jonathan,
But then the line is a bit diffuse.
Would you document 'ssize_t' and not 'size_t'?
Yes. My documentation for ssize_t would mention size_t, refer to the C
standard, and not define it.
Would you not document intN_t types?
Would you document stdint types, including 'intptr_t', and not 'void *'?
I would document neither.
I can see some small value in documenting size_t and the stdint types,
as they are technically defined by the libc headers. But documenting
void* seems very silly. It's one of the most fundamental built-in
parts of the C language, not an interface provided by the system.
I guess the basic types (int, long, ...) can be left out for now,
I should hope so!
and apart from 'int' those rarely are the most appropriate types
for most uses.
But other than that, I would document all of the types.
And even... when all of the other types are documented,
it will be only a little extra effort to document those,
so in the future I might consider that.
[insert Jurassic Park meme "Your scientists were so preoccupied with
whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should."
]
I don't see value in bloating the man-pages with information nobody
will ever use, and which doesn't (IMHO) belong there anyway. We seem
to fundamentally disagree about what the man pages are for. I don't
think they are supposed to teach C programming from scratch.
Agree in part.
I'll try to think about it again.
In the meantime, I trust Michael to tell me when something is way off :)
Thanks, really!
Alex
But yes, priority should probably go to Linux/POSIX-only types.
