5.28 Prototypes and Old-Style Function Definitions

GNU C extends ISO 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.  */
     #ifdef __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. ISO 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 ISO 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;
     }

GNU C++ does not support old-style function definitions, so this extension is irrelevant.