Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ncar!husc6!endor!siegel
From: siegel@endor.harvard.edu (Rich Siegel)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.programmer
Subject: Re: THINK C 4.0
Message-ID: <2532@husc6.harvard.edu>
Date: 30 Aug 89 05:06:09 GMT
References: <581@gistdev.UUCP>
Sender: news@husc6.harvard.edu
Reply-To: siegel@endor.UUCP (Rich Siegel)
Organization: Symantec Language Products Group
Lines: 49

In article <581@gistdev.UUCP> joe@gistdev.UUCP (Joe Brownlee) writes:
>
>One of the things I have liked about LSC was the ability to bring UNIX work
>home, and be able compile to run it reasonably under LSC on the Mac.  I think
>that some of the omissions of from ANSI in TC 4.0 will be a problem for me in
>trying to continue to do this.

	I'm impressed. THINK C 3.0 was much less ANSI-conformant than THINK C
4.0 is, and you were able to port ANSI programs to it?

>C is not chisled in stone yet.  The thing that bothered me was the statement
>in the manual (in the differences from previous versions section) that the ANSI
>features that were omitted were either fundamental changes (i.e. too hard) or
>trigraphs and such, but the implication from the statement in the manual is that
>we shouldn't be looking for a true ANSI compiler out of Symantec in the future.

	Trying to draw conclusions from the reasoning behind design decisions
is a losing proposition, in my opinion. UNLESS the manual says "we will never
ever in a million years come out with a full ANSI compiler", you're misleading
a lot of people (including yourself) by drawing this conclusion. "We didn't
do it in this version because it required fundamental changes" IS NOT THE SAME
as "we will never do it".

	A specific example: "const" and "volatile" can be considered to be
directives to the code generator or optimizer;  "const" means "this data
element will never change", and "volatile" means "this data element is
subject to change without notice due to external forces" (e.g. at interrupt
time). To fully take advantage of these directives, fairly extensive changes to
the code generator would be required, and there wasn't time to do this for
the 4.0 release.
	
	Again, I would advise against drawing long-term conclusions from
statements where nothing lends weight to those conclusions...

R.



~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
 Rich Siegel
 Staff Software Developer
 Symantec Corporation, Language Products Group
 Internet: siegel@endor.harvard.edu
 UUCP: ..harvard!endor!siegel

"There is no personal problem which cannot be solved by sufficient
application of high explosives."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~