[issue14746] Remove redundant paragraphs from getargs.c skipitem()

[Larry Hastings]

New submission from Larry Hastings <larry at hastings.org>:

There's code like this in skipitem() in Python/getargs.c:

    case 'b': /* byte -- very short int */
    /* ... a zillion more case statements here ... */
    case 'C': /* unicode char */
    case 'p': /* boolean predicate */
        {
            (void) va_arg(*p_va, void *);
            break;
        }

    case 'n': /* Py_ssize_t */
        {
            (void) va_arg(*p_va, Py_ssize_t *);
            break;
        }

    /* ... a bunch of other stuff here ... */

    case 'S': /* string object */
    case 'Y': /* string object */
    case 'U': /* unicode string object */
        {
            (void) va_arg(*p_va, PyObject **);
            break;
        }


I cannot for the life of me imagine a platform where the size of a "Py_ssize_t *" or a "PyObject **" would be different from the size of a "void *".  I've programmed on platforms where code pointers and data pointers were different sizes--but data pointers to different sizes of data?  Never heard of it.

But I've been wrong before!  So, rather than simply make the change, I'm posting this bug just as a double check.

It's safe to fold 'n', 'S', 'Y', and 'U' into the initial paragraph of case statements simply skipping a pointer... isn't it?

----------
assignee: larry
messages: 160179
nosy: larry
priority: low
severity: normal
stage: needs patch
status: open
title: Remove redundant paragraphs from getargs.c skipitem()
type: enhancement

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Python tracker <report at bugs.python.org>
<http://bugs.python.org/issue14746>
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