Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!purdue!mentor.cc.purdue.edu!acu
From: acu@mentor.cc.purdue.edu (Floyd McWilliams)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Trigraphs (was Re: Uninitialized externals and statics)
Summary: Why use "??!"??!
Keywords: trigraphs
Message-ID: <3776@mentor.cc.purdue.edu>
Date: 29 Aug 89 14:30:04 GMT
References: <2128@infmx.UUCP> <4700042@m.cs.uiuc.edu> <1989Aug25.185428.3511@utzoo.uucp> <609@paperboy.OSF.ORG> <10831@smoke.BRL.MIL> <1392@atanasoff.cs.iastate.edu> <10859@smoke.BRL.MIL>
Reply-To: acu@mentor.cc.purdue.edu (Floyd McWilliams)
Organization: PHAP
Lines: 19

In article <10859@smoke.BRL.MIL> gwyn@brl.arpa (Doug Gwyn) writes:
>In article <1392@atanasoff.cs.iastate.edu> John Hascall writes:

	(Discussion on EBCDIC deleted.)

>>(pps. I think trigraphs were a misguided effort as well)

>I think that most of X3J11 might even privately agree with that
>assessment.  However, they serve a possibly useful function with
>very little adverse impact (mainly on idiots who use "??!").

	Not to be a pain, but why did X3J11 use ??! for a trigraph?
They only needed 8 or 9 distinct trigraphs, and "!" is one of the
two characters I can think of that have any meaning after "??". 
	I realize that over-emphasizing with ??! is bad style, but
that's not scope of X3J11... :-)

"Life's for my own, to live my own way."
Floyd McWilliams			mentor.cc.purdue.edu!acu