In the last post we set up everything in order to write a GCC plugin. Before we can go on we need to understand a bit how GCC compiles your files.

GCC's C and C++ compilers provide several extensions to address several programming needs not covered in the standards. One of these is the warn_unused_result attribute. This attribute warns us that we are discarding the result of a function. Unfortunately, for C++ it does not always work as expected.

In chapter 13 we saw VFPv2 and the fact that it allows vectorial operations on floating-point numbers. You may be wondering if such a similar feature exists for integers. The answer is yes although in a more limited way.

The C programming language comes with its own set of warts if we closely examine its syntax and semantics. One of the oddities that puzzles most people is the fact that there are no parameters of array types in C. This fact, though, does not prevent one using the array syntax in a parameter.

Today we will continue with nested functions.