Re: cast result of copyNode()

Peter Eisentraut <peter(dot)eisentraut(at)2ndquadrant(dot)com> writes:
> In order to reduce the number of useless casts and make the useful casts
> more interesting, here is a patch that automatically casts the result of
> copyNode() back to the input type, if the compiler supports something
> like typeof(), which most current compilers appear to. That gets us
> some more type safety and we only need to retain the casts that actually
> do change the type.

But doesn't this result in a boatload of warnings on compilers that
don't have typeof()?

If typeof() were in C99 I might figure that is an okay tradeoff,
but it isn't. I'm not sure that this is the most useful place
to be moving our C standards compliance expectations by 20 years
in one jump.

Also, if your answer is "you shouldn't get any warnings because
copyObject is already declared to return void *", then why aren't
we just relying on that today?

regards, tom lane