gcc merrily compiles empty files

[Michael Meissner]

On Tue, Jun 20, 2000 at 08:03:32PM -0400, Henry Sobotka wrote:
> Michael Meissner wrote:
> > 
> > The -pedantic option warns about this (of course, it warns about lots of other
> > things as well).  Speaking as a programmer, I can certainly imagine uses for
> > empty files (for example for conditional debug code).
> 
> I don't mean technically empty in the sense of a file that ends up empty
> because conditions aren't met. I'm talking about a physically
> 0-byte-length source.

I was meaning physically empty (the conditional compilation may have happened
upstream from the compiler -- for example, at Red Hat (previously Cygnus),
ports that aren't released yet and covered by NDAs are removed by a sanization
process before the sources are distributed which could leave an empty file).

-- 
Michael Meissner, Red Hat, Inc.
PMB 198, 174 Littleton Road #3, Westford, Massachusetts 01886, USA
Work:	  meissner@redhat.com		phone: +1 978-486-9304
Non-work: meissner@spectacle-pond.org	fax:   +1 978-692-4482