Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!purdue!haven!adm!smoke!gwyn
From: gwyn@smoke.BRL.MIL (Doug Gwyn)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: This one bit me today
Message-ID: <11368@smoke.BRL.MIL>
Date: 21 Oct 89 22:21:08 GMT
References: <2432@hub.UUCP> <568@sppy00.UUCP> <750@philmtl.philips.ca> <4147@ncsuvx.ncsu.edu> <267@wsl.UUCP> <244@bbxsda.UUCP> <1901@xyzzy.UUCP> <255@bbxsda.UUCP> <1949@xyzzy.UUCP> <273@bbxsda.UUCP> <11348@smoke.BRL.MIL> <280@bbxsda.UUCP>
Reply-To: gwyn@brl.arpa (Doug Gwyn)
Organization: Ballistic Research Lab (BRL), APG, MD.
Lines: 13

In article <280@bbxsda.UUCP> scott@bbxsda.UUCP (Scott Amspoker) writes:
>In article <11348@smoke.BRL.MIL> gwyn@brl.arpa (Doug Gwyn) writes:
>>What is wrong with this [nested comment] "enhancement" is that it is not a
>>transparent extension.  It encourages writing code that looks like C but
>>performs differently from the way C code would.

>You seem to think that, even though it doesn't affect you at all, others
>still should not be allowed to do it because it's not good for them.

No, to take an analogy:  I wouldn't want to encourage smoking, because it's
not healthy, even though so long as it's done in private I wouldn't outlaw
it either.  Supporting nested comments in C constitutes active encouragement
of an unhealthy practice, and I recommend against compiler vendors doing it.