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:

Facts I Learned From Maoism: A Global History (Part Two)

As I read Maoism: A Global History, I came to the conclusion that Maoism is a cognitohazard.

via Thing of Things August 18, 2025

The anti-fragile culture

I wrote a post about organizational culture!.

via Home August 6, 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

more     (via openring)