Post #4790657 · Elektrine

2026-09-21 04:51 UTC

Possibly because declarations were originally not statements in C? You could only declare variables at the start of a function, but not assign them to something at the same time. Not sure why it still wouldn’t be allowed, though, especially if an empty statement can be a statement.

Replies (2)

@balsoft@lemmy.ml 2026-09-21 08:34

I think it evolved like that: Declarations are separate entities to statements, because declarations do not translate to a machine code instruction Labels only make sense when attached to statements because they need to point to a particular machine code instruction <-- This should have been changed at least when declarations were allowed to be mixed with statements in compound statements Definitions are declarations plus an assignment, let’s make them a subset of a declaration <-- I think this is the biggest mistake of them all "Well, it’s already been that way for 40 years, too late to change it now!"

Open ##4791085
@daychilde@lemmy.world 2026-09-21 11:10

if an empty statement can be a statement. Sometimes saying nothing is the loudest statement you can make. ;-)

Open ##4792415