bug#19173: [PATCH] dfa: speed-up for long pattern

[Jim Meyering]

On Sat, Jul 4, 2015 at 11:18 PM,  <address@hidden> wrote:
> Jim Meyering <address@hidden> wrote:
>
>> and moved
>> some declarations "down".
>
> Can we keep delcarations C89 style please?  Gawk still supports
> some environments that don't allow declarations in the middle
> of executable code.

For coreutils, in 2006 I began maintaining a c99-to-c89.diff patch,
keeping the sources more readable/maintainable with decl-after-stmt,
yet letting those who find the need to build with old compilers first
apply the patch.  In 2009, I cut the cord and stopped maintaining that
file altogether, because then, there were so few systems (and none a
"reasonable portability target") for which no usable compiler was
available.

If you'd like to provide that service for gawk, I suggest you do what
I did with that c99-to-c89.diff patch. There were a few Makefile rules
to un-fuzz the patches.

Here's what coreutils' README says, now:

***********************
Pre-C99 build failure
-----------------------

There is a new, implicit build requirement:
To build the coreutils from source, you should have a C99-conforming
compiler, due to the use of declarations after non-declaration statements
in several files in src/.  There is code in configure to find and, if
possible, enable an appropriate compiler.  However, if configure doesn't
find a C99 compiler, it continues nonetheless, and your build will fail.
If that happens, simply[*] apply the included patch using the following
command, and then run make again:

  cd src && patch < c99-to-c89.diff

[*] however, as of coreutils-7.1, the "c99-to-c89.diff" file is no longer
maintained, so even if the patches still apply, the result will be an
incomplete conversion.  It's been 10 years.  Get a decent compiler! ;-)