Re: Do we care if C compilers start allowing "." on pointers?

On Fri, Jan 10, 2025 at 05:09:21PM -0800, Bill Wendling wrote:
> On Fri, Jan 10, 2025 at 7:02 AM Paul E. McKenney <[email protected]> wrote:
> >
> > Hello!
> >
> > Currently, given a pointer "p", C allows p->a but not p.a.  There is a
> > proposal from C++ [1] that is being considered for C.
> >
> > Do we care?
> >
> Does the proposal seem likely to be added to C++? The motivation is
> very weak, in my opinion. Other languages are very different from
> C/C++; they try to hide away memory management details, which are a
> major part of C languages. (To prevent a holy war, my comments aren't
> about the benefits and drawbacks of memory management in other
> languages.)
> 
> As for the kernel, if C/C++ adopt this convention, we won't be able to
> accept contributions which use '.' to access pointers until the
> minimum version of the compilers support this feature, which I imagine
> will take several years. My personal opinion would be to require '->'
> even when the option is available, unless a much better motivation is
> made.

Can't say that I disagree with any of this.  ;-)

Other thoughts?

							Thanx, Paul