Implicitly Typed C

December 11th, 2023
tech
I don't know any good reason to do this, but if you would rather be writing Python or JavaScript here's something you can do with a C compiler:

$ cat tmp.c
foo(x) {
  return x+5;
}
bar() {
  return 4;
}
main() {
  printf("%d\n", foo(bar()));
}

$ gcc -w -o tmp.out tmp.c && ./tmp.out
9

This code takes advantage of a historical quirk of C where types are assumed to be int unless otherwise specified: foo(x) {...} is equivalent to int foo(int x) {...}. Additionally the printf works because gcc includes stdio.h by default, and main is special-cased to assume a final return 0.

I've occasionally used this style when writing example code to remove visual noise, but it's probably not a good idea there either.

Comment via: facebook, lesswrong, mastodon, substack

Recent posts on blogs I like:

Tuberculosis Considered As Dating Strategy

Against some evopsych

via Thing of Things July 8, 2025

Retrospective on life tracking and effectiveness systems

I’ve been doing life tracking for around 10 years, and this post is looking back at some things I learned from the data (since my previous retrospective in 2017). Highlights include what I get out of the Oura ring, correlations between sleep and deep work…

via Victoria Krakovna July 4, 2025

Elixir's Last Dance

On May 18th, the contra dance band Elixir had their last gig ever. The dance was packed: there were three hundred people. It was the only dance BIDA has ever done where they sold tickets. People flew from across the country just to hear Elixir play one la…

via Lily Wise's Blog Posts June 5, 2025

more     (via openring)