Ignoring return values in C

The common way is to just call foo(); without casting into (void).

He who has never ignored printf()'s return value, cast the first stone.

I personally like the "unused" warnings, but on occasion there are instances where I have to ignore them (e.g., the write() to user, or fscanf(...,"%*s\n") or strtol() where the return value is unimportant and I just want the side effect of [maybe] moving the file pointer along.)

With gcc 4.6, it's getting quite tricky.

• Casting to (void) no longer works.
• Re-writing functions (especially variadic) is tedious and clumsy.
• {ssize_t ignore; ignore=write(...);} throws up another warning (assigned-not-used).
• write(...)+1 throws up yet another warning (computed-value-not-used).

The only good (if ugly) way to suppress these is to convert the return value into something that the compiler agrees that you can ignore.

E.g., (void)(write(...)+1).

This is apparently progress. (And +0 does not work, BTW.)