Re: dfa.c fix for C89 compilers

[Jim Meyering]

Aharon Robbins wrote:
...
> diff -u -r1.27 dfa.c
> --- dfa.c     29 Mar 2010 02:58:08 -0000      1.27
> +++ dfa.c     31 Mar 2010 12:45:16 -0000
> @@ -2781,6 +2781,7 @@
>    unsigned char eol = eolbyte;       /* Likewise for eolbyte.  */
>    static int sbit[NOTCHAR];  /* Table for anding with d->success. */
>    static int sbit_init;
> +  unsigned char saved_end;
>
>    if (! sbit_init)
>      {
> @@ -2798,7 +2799,7 @@
>    s = s1 = 0;
>    p = (unsigned char const *) begin;
>    trans = d->trans;
> -  unsigned char saved_end = *(unsigned char *) end;
> +  saved_end = *(unsigned char *) end;

Hi Arnold,

Thanks, but I have to refuse such changes, especially in the likes
of dfa.c.  They decrease readability.  It is already too complex,
and as soon as grep stabilizes (i.e. goes a week or so without a new bug
report) I plan to move many more declarations "down", along with other
clean-up and maintainability- and readability-improving changes.

If there is sufficient interest (and justification), I might agree
to maintain a patch file that applies changes like the one above,
but that's all.  I moved coreutils away from strict c89 compliance
with the introduction of such declare-after-stmt uses about 3 years
ago.  Since then, there have been very few complaints, and most of
those were out of laziness in using long-out-of-date compilers and
not having the time to build/install gcc.

c89 is now 21 years old.