[AD] Proposal: removal of zero-sized arrays

[Laurence Withers <lwithers@xxxxxxxxxx>]

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Hi,

As the title says, I propose that we remove zero-sized arrays from the 
library.

Advantages:
 - dat2c will work nicely :-)
 - more generally, it is possible to statically-initialise structures 
   with zero-sized arrays (you might want to do this for sub bitmaps
   etc. to make sure that their creation never fails, thus simplifying
   your code)
 - makes the code a little simpler in certain places (ie. the ZERO_SIZE
   macro in header files, etc)
 - AIUI zero-sized arrays are not ANSI C [1] (as always, please correct 
   me if I'm wrong)

Disadvantages:
 - requires somebody to do the work (I volunteer) and some work checking
   and applying
 - increases instance size by sizeof(void*) + alignment
 - functions creating such structures require an extra line of code

What stays the same:
 - no code (library or user), with the sole exception of object 
   creation, needs to be changed
 - still only one malloc() call is required

[1] http://www.eskimo.com/~scs/C-faq/q2.6.html

Bye for now,
- -- 
Laurence Withers,  lwithers@xxxxxxxxxx
(GnuPG 04A646EA) http://www.lwithers.demon.co.uk/
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