was that form ever legal C?

Yeah, it was (for certain values of 'legal'). That form of function prototype is known as 'K&R style'... There are - in the broadest possible terms - two versions of C. The first is usually called 'K&R C', from the initials of the authors of the canonical textbook (The C Programming Language). The second is called 'ANSI C' or 'ISO C', from the initials of the American and international standards bodies who, well, standardized the language.

Anyway, when ANSI standardized the C language it got a major overhaul, which included a new form of function declaration. The old form will still compile on lots of compilers, but the new form (usually called 'ANSI style') is much better.

email: perl -e 'print reverse map { chr( ord($_)-1 ) } split //, "\x0bufo/hojsfufqAofc";'

In reply to Re^2: help porting a line of bitwise C code to perl by missingthepoint
in thread help porting a line of bitwise C code to perl by blahblahblah

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