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From: chris@mimsy.umd.edu (Chris Torek)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: turbo C memory question
Message-ID: <20426@mimsy.umd.edu>
Date: 27 Oct 89 04:27:39 GMT
References: <20401@mimsy.umd.edu> <4316@ncsuvx.ncsu.edu>
Organization: U of Maryland, Dept. of Computer Science, Coll. Pk., MD 20742
Lines: 52

>In article <20401@mimsy.umd.edu> I wrote:
>>In many articles many people ask about Turbo C, Microsoft C, ....
>>Can we keep questions about specific implementations in implementation
>>specific newsgroups, please?

On rereading what I wrote (see parent articles for details), I realised
that this was ambiguous.  The followup below agrees:

In article <4316@ncsuvx.ncsu.edu> unkydave@shumv1.uucp (David Bank) writes:
>... C is C is C. Whether it is implemented on a Sun, VAXen, Itsy Bities,
>or whatever.

However, `C' is (as a current best definition) the language and library
routines as given in the proposed ANSI C standard.  This includes
things like printf() and fopen(), but it does not include things like
findfirst() and findnext() (or whatever they are called).  It does not
include scandir().  It does not include openlog() (my earlier
example).  It does not even include `near' and `far' pointers,
discussion about these (such as `should C provide more flavours of
pointers since there are lots of segmented machines') being much closer
to being about C in general than about C-on-machine-X-with-compiler-Y.
Discussions about particulars of C-on-machine-X-with-compiler-Y are the
ones to which I was referring in `>>' above.

>Further, what are the owners of "less than common" machines to do??

In general, we suffer.  (Anyone want a used TRS-80 model 1 level 2 with
48 kB of RAM?  One of the 4116s in the EI is bad.  The screen is also a
bit melted from having been left in the car in the sunshine.) The
Officially Approved procedure for dealing with such things is to post a
message saying `I want to form a mailing list about this machine'.
Such a message would normally belong in comp.sys.misc, unless it were
something like `I want to form a mailing list about implementing
language L on this machine', in which case it is borderline.

Here, for instance, is an example of a question which should NOT have
been posted to comp.lang.c (name removed to protect the guilty):

>Newsgroups: comp.lang.c,comp.databases,comp.sources.wanted
>Subject: ndbm manual info
>I am looking for any manual information on the ndbm C language database
>routines. ...

These routines do happen to be written in C, but are specific to 4.3BSD
Unix and systems that have copied them from 4.3BSD Unix.  A better choice
of newsgroups would have been `comp.unix.questions,comp.databases,
comp.sources.wanted' (and comp.databases is rather weak, given what
ndbm is :-) ).
-- 
`They were supposed to be green.'
In-Real-Life: Chris Torek, Univ of MD Comp Sci Dept (+1 301 454 7163)
Domain:	chris@cs.umd.edu	Path:	uunet!mimsy!chris