[Ffmpeg-devel] Matroska Patch

[Måns Rullgård]

Rich Felker <dalias at aerifal.cx> writes:

> On Thu, Mar 23, 2006 at 10:10:35AM +0100, Diego Biurrun wrote:
>> > I disagree strongly. Renaming variables because of a broken compiler
>> > simply hides bugs in the compiler. If people keep seeing that they
>> > have to make workarounds when using broken compilers maybe they'll
>> > complain to the compiler vendor or switch to a standards-compliant
>> > compiler. If we just hide the bug it encourages people to use this
>> > crap.
>> 
>> This case is different IMO.  The use of 'time' as variable name is
>> problematic.  You have to have a copy of the C standard lying around to
>> check which uses are allowed and which aren't to avoid shooting yourself
>> in the foot.
>
> No you don't. It's very clear. You're not allowed to use names from
> the C library as external symbols. Any other use is just fine as long
> as you don't include the header (in this case time.h).

Even if you do include the header, using the names in local scope is
fine, with the exception of object-like macros.  Standard library
functions are not allowed to be defined by the system headers as
object-like macros, so using "time" as a local variable name will
never be problematic in a conforming environment.  The C99 standard
makes this quite clear in sections 7.1.3-4.

-- 
M?ns Rullg?rd
mru at inprovide.com