WG15 Defect Report Ref: 9945-2-147
Topic: None specified


This is an approved interpretation of 9945-2:1993.

.

Last update: 1997-05-20


								9945-2-147

 _____________________________________________________________________________

	Topic : 		yytext
	Relevant Sections: 	A.2.7.1

Defect Report:
-----------------------

	From: "Tom Shem" <tshem@hposl62.cup.hp.com>
	Date: Tue, 19 Mar 1996 11:27:44 -0800


Dear Standards Board,

I would like to an request official, binding interpretation from the
WG15 concerning the following point in ISO/IEC 9945-2:1993 (POSIX.2).

POSIX.2-1992, Page 697, Section A.2.7.1, lines 371-375 state:

 "Implementations shall accept either of the following two mutually exclusive
  declarations in the Definitions section:

    %array	Declare the type of yytext to be a null-terminated character
		array.

    %pointer	Declare the type of yytext to be a pointer to a null-terminated
		character string."

Several years ago we internationalized our C compiler and utilities and yytext
was changed from a "char" array to unsigned.  This was to support the input
of Latin (ISO8859) characters. According to ANSI/ISO C Standard (ISO/IEC 9899:1990),
whether a "char" is signed or not is implementation defined and our C compiler
defines it as signed.  Hence it was necessary to modify the yytext output
as "unsigned char" arrays in order to support full 8-bit characters without
sign extension.

.Begin Example

200|484 1 21:55:55|TP Start
520|484 1 3218 1 1|Assertion #53 (C): Test the %pointer semantic and yytext ty
i
ng
520|484 1 3218 1 1|the following lines are grep'ed from lex.yy.c
520|484 1 3218 1 2|# define ECHO fprintf(yyout, "%s",yytext)
520|484 1 3218 1 3|extern unsigned char yytextarr[];
520|484 1 3218 1 4|extern unsigned char *yytext;
520|484 1 3218 1 5|yytext=yytextarr;
520|484 1 3218 1 6|unsigned char yytextuc[YYLMAX lex.ex lex.sh lex.yy.c lex_in
5
3_1 lex_out_53_1 makefile out.stderr out.stdout tet1.3206 tet_deletes tet_lock
t
et_stderr tet_tests tet_tmpfiles tet_tmpres tet_xres sizeof(wchar_t)];
520|484 1 3218 1 7|wchar_t yytextarr[YYLMAX];
520|484 1 3218 1 8|wchar_t *yytext;
520|484 1 3218 1 9|wchar_t yytextarr[1];
520|484 1 3218 1 10|wchar_t yytext[YYLMAX];
520|484 1 3218 1 11|unsigned char yytextuc;
520|484 1 3218 1 12|unsigned char yytextarr[YYLMAX];
520|484 1 3218 1 13|unsigned char *yytext;
520|484 1 3218 1 14|unsigned char yytextarr[1];
520|484 1 3218 1 15|char yytext[YYLMAX];
520|484 1 3218 1 16|unsigned char yytext[YYLMAX];
520|484 1 3218 1 17|yylastch = yytextuc;
520|484 1 3218 1 18|yylastch = (unsigned char *)yytext;
520|484 1 3218 1 19|yylastch = yytext;
520|484 1 3218 1 20|yylastch = yytextu520|484 1 3218 1 22|yylastch = yytext+yy
eng;
520|484 1 3218 1 23|yylenguc = yylastch-yytextuc+1;
520|484 1 3218 1 24|yytextuc[yylenguc] = 0;
520|484 1 3218 1 25|yyleng = yylastch-(unsigned char*)yytext+1;
520|484 1 3218 1 26|yyleng = yylastch-yytext+1;
520|484 1 3218 1 27|yytext[yyleng] = 0;
520|484 1 3218 1 28|sprint(yytextuc);
520|484 1 3218 1 29|sprint(yytext);
520|484 1 3218 1 30|if (yytextuc[0] == 0 /Mail /SCT /bin /debug.out /dev /doL
e
tc /export /home /lib /lost+found /net /opt /sbin /sh.ragaa /stand /tmp /tmp_m
t
 /usr /var && feof(yyin) */)
520|484 1 3218 1 31|if (yytext[0] == 0 /Mail /SCT /bin /debug.out /dev /doL /e
c
 /export /home /lib /lost+found /net /opt /sbin /sh.ragaa /stand /tmp /tmp_mnt
/
usr /var && feof(yyin) */)

520|484 1 3218 1 32|yyprevious = yytextuc[0] = input();
520|484 1 3218 1 33|yyprevious = yytext[0] = input();
520|484 1 3218 1 34|noBytes = MultiByte(yytextuc[0],sec,third,fourth);
520|484 1 3218 1 35|noBytes = MultiByte(yytext[0],sec,third,fourth);
520|484 1 3218 1 36|output(yyprevious=yytextuc[0]=sec);
520|484 1 3218 1 37|output(yyprevious=yytext[0]=sec);
520|484 1 3218 1 38|output(yyprevious=yytextuc[0]=sec);
520|484 1 3218 1 39|output(yyprevious=yytextuc[0]=third);
520|484 1 3218 1 40|output(yyprevious=yytext[0]=sec);
520|484 1 3218 1 41|output(yyprevious=yytext[0]=third);
520|484 1 3218 1 42|output(yyprevious=yytextuc[0]=sec);
520|484 1 3218 1 43|output(yyprevious=yytextuc[0]=third);
520|484 1 3218 1 44|output(yyprevious=yytextuc[0]=fourth);
520|520|484 1 3218 1 46|output(yyprevious=yytext[0]=third);
520|484 1 3218 1 47|output(yyprevious=yytext[0]=fourth);
520|484 1 3218 1 48|yylastch=yytextuc;
520|484 1 3218 1 49|yylastch=(unsigned char*)yytext;
520|484 1 3218 1 50|yylastch=yytext;
520|484 1 3218 1 51|inspect journal to ensure that yytext is declared as a poi
t
er to type char
220|484 1 102 21:56:01|INSPECT
410|484 53 1 21:56:01|IC End484 1 3218 1 45|output(yyprevious=yytext[0]=sec);c
yylenguc;

520|484 1 3218 1 21|yylastch = (unsigned char *)yytext+yyleng;

.End Example

We believe this change to be correct and that it does not violate the POSIX.2
standard; however, we received a differing opinion.   We request an official
interpretation on the matter of whether the POSIX.2 standard disallows the
"unsigned char" array definition.

Thank you for your attention to this matter.

Tom Shem
tshem@cup.hp.com


Interpretation response
------------------------

POSIX.2, page 697, Section A.2.7.1, lines 371-375, clearly references
null-terminated character array.  The C standard Section 6.1.2.5 describing
types, clearly states the three types, char, signed-char, unsigned-char, are
collectively called character types, therefore, POSIX.2 clearly does not
specify whether yytext is an array of char, signed char or unsigned char,
only that it is one of these three.  The standard clearly states the
acceptable types for a character array, and conforming implementations must
conform to this.

Rationale
-------------
None.
Forwarded to Interpretations group: Apr 10 1996
Forwarded for review: May 21 1996
Finalised : Jul 9th 1996