http://invisible-island.net/
Copyright © 1997-2017,2022 by Thomas E. Dickey

Synopsis

unproto — Compile ANSI C with traditional UNIX C compiler

History

I used this program to support backward compatibility (K&R C versus ANSI C) for some of the programs that I'm working on. However, I no longer use the platforms (SunOS 4 and HPUX 9) for which it was helpful.

Documentation

From the README:

Wietse Venema
wietse@wzv.win.tue.nl
Mathematics and Computing Science
Eindhoven University of Technology
The Netherlands

This is a filter that sits in between the UNIX C preprocessor and the next UNIX C compiler stage, on the fly transforming ANSI C syntax to old C syntax. Line number information is preserved so that compiler diagnostics still make sense. It runs at roughly the same speed as /lib/cpp, so it has negligible impact on compilation time.

The filter rewrites ANSI-style function headings, function pointer types and type casts, function prototypes, and combinations thereof. Unlike some other unprototypers, this one is fully recursive and does not depend on source file layout (see the example.c file).

Besides the rewriting of argument lists, the program does the following transformations: string concatenation, conversion of \a and \x escape sequences to their octal equivalents, translation of the __TIME__ and __DATE__ macros, optional mapping of “void *” to “char *”, and optional mapping of plain “void” to “int”.

The unprototyper provides hooks for compilers that require special tricks for variadic functions (fortunately, many don't). <stdarg.h> support is provided for sparc, mips, mc68k, 80x86, vax, and others.

The program has been tested with SunOS 4.1.1 (sparc), Ultrix 4.0 and 4.2 (mips), and Microport System V Release 2 (80286). It should work with almost every PCC-based UNIX C compiler.

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