Thread: Re: Remove useless casts to (void *)

Re: Remove useless casts to (void *)

From
Tom Lane
Date:
Peter Eisentraut <peter@eisentraut.org> writes:
> There are a bunch of (void *) casts in the code that don't make sense to 
> me.  I think some of these were once necessary because char * was used 
> in place of void * for some function arguments.  And some of these were 
> probably just copied around without further thought.  I went through and 
> cleaned up most of these.  I didn't find any redeeming value in these. 
> They are just liable to hide actual problems such as incompatible types. 
>   But maybe there are other opinions.

I don't recall details, but I'm fairly sure some of these prevented
compiler warnings on some (old?) compilers.  Hard to be sure if said
compilers are all gone.

Looking at the sheer size of the patch, I'm kind of -0.1, just
because I'm afraid it's going to create back-patching gotchas.
I don't really find that it's improving readability, though
clearly that's a matter of opinion.

            regards, tom lane



Re: Remove useless casts to (void *)

From
Bruce Momjian
Date:
On Tue, Oct 29, 2024 at 10:20:03AM -0400, Tom Lane wrote:
> Peter Eisentraut <peter@eisentraut.org> writes:
> > There are a bunch of (void *) casts in the code that don't make sense to 
> > me.  I think some of these were once necessary because char * was used 
> > in place of void * for some function arguments.  And some of these were 
> > probably just copied around without further thought.  I went through and 
> > cleaned up most of these.  I didn't find any redeeming value in these. 
> > They are just liable to hide actual problems such as incompatible types. 
> >   But maybe there are other opinions.
> 
> I don't recall details, but I'm fairly sure some of these prevented
> compiler warnings on some (old?) compilers.  Hard to be sure if said
> compilers are all gone.
> 
> Looking at the sheer size of the patch, I'm kind of -0.1, just
> because I'm afraid it's going to create back-patching gotchas.
> I don't really find that it's improving readability, though
> clearly that's a matter of opinion.

I kind of liked the patch in terms of simplifying things.

-- 
  Bruce Momjian  <bruce@momjian.us>        https://momjian.us
  EDB                                      https://enterprisedb.com

  When a patient asks the doctor, "Am I going to die?", he means 
  "Am I going to die soon?"