Is there a GCC option to treat foo() as foo(void)?

Question

I'm creating a compiler for a language that outputs GNU C as intermediate code. (yes, I know there's better ways of doing IR, but I'm lazy and I'm going to rewrite it to be self-hosting anyway).

Currently if I make a function with no arguments, my compiler produces

bar foo(){/*Implementation here*/}

Which is not the same as the desired behaviour:

bar foo(void){/*Implementation here*/}

However, I'd like GCC to treat the former as the latter (otherwise I have to make a special case in my code).

Is there a flag for GCC to do this?

Yes it's mighty but not stupid enough to provide features which obviously would pervert its task, that is compiling C source. And what ask for is not C. However gcc has a plug-in interface. and everybody is free to use it and with this add features to gcc. — alk, Oct 27 '13 at 17:26
@alk: I appreciate there's probably not a good reason for it. Just wondering. — Michael Rawson, Oct 27 '13 at 17:32
It's a special case in C, therefore it should be a special case in the C code you generate. — Keith Thompson, Jan 02 '15 at 07:49

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Jan 02 '15 at 07:15

Having searched through the rather voluminous options provided by gcc, I haven't found anything approaching what you want.

However, if you're going to generate C code, my belief is that it's encumbent on you to generate correct code. The gcc bods know full well the difference between a "zero argument" function and an "indeterminate number of arguments" one. So, my suggestion is to bite the bullet and insert that special case into your code.

If it's properly structured, you should only have to make the change in one place :-)

Is there a GCC option to treat foo() as foo(void)?

1 Answers1