Re: Handling 'initializer element not constant' error

On May 7, 8:01 pm, rich...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
 (Richard Tobin) wrote:
> In article <slrng23i52.1aj2.wil...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>,
>
> Willem  <wil...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> >)> FILE *yyerfp = stdout;
> >I would consider that a very good example of why your advice is good
> >advice.  To the OP: libraries shouldn't be using stdout, and certainly
> >not hardwired.
>
> In general I agree.
>
> But the fact that he's using it to initialise a variable strongly
> suggests that it is *not* hardwired, but just a default.  If the user
> wasn't supposed to be able to change it, the OP could just use stdio
> instead of yyerfp.
>
> Assuming the OP can change the code of the library, he could
> initialise yyerfp to NULL and replace all the uses of it with
>
>    (yyerfp ? yyerfp : stdout)
Slightly better way:

FILE *yyerfp_;
/* ... */
#define yyerfp (yyerfp ? yyerfp : stdout)

> It's a pity there isn't a standard way to get initialisation code run.
I don't think it's that much of a problem. Well-designed code wouldn't
use global variables. (with few exceptions such as errno)