Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!csd4.csd.uwm.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!bfmny0!tneff
From: tneff@bfmny0.UU.NET (Tom Neff)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Fruits of X3J11 (was Re: quotes inside #if 0)
Message-ID: <14646@bfmny0.UU.NET>
Date: 10 Sep 89 04:35:29 GMT
References: <1989Sep10.004441.23090@utzoo.uucp>
Reply-To: tneff@bfmny0.UU.NET (Tom Neff)
Organization: ^
Lines: 17
Summary:
Expires:
Sender:
Followup-To:

Rather than rely on bureaucratic interpretation of a lengthy spec, why
not publish a portable Standard C compiler, written in K&R-1 C, which
exhibits the characteristics of a conforming compiler and is suitably
commented with references to the spec?  The code generated could be
pseudocode or a suite of hardware specific generators could be assembled
as people have time to write them.  Hotshot efficiency would not be
the goal -- leave that to the commercial vendors.

It seems to me that questions of "what do you do if X follows Y under
condition Z" would be a lot easier to deal with if the answer were
"whatever Standard C does" rather than "well what we MEANT to say in
paragraph 1.37.6 was..."

I suppose a meeting of the minds with Stallman on this is beyond hope...
-- 
Annex Canada now!  We need the room,	\)	Tom Neff
    and who's going to stop us.		(\	tneff@bfmny0.UU.NET