Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!bfmny0!tneff
From: tneff@bfmny0.UU.NET (Tom Neff)
Newsgroups: comp.std.c
Subject: Re: noalias (was: Re: the "const" qualifier)
Message-ID: <14779@bfmny0.UU.NET>
Date: 22 Oct 89 06:39:09 GMT
References: <12239@cit-vax.Caltech.Edu> <11301@smoke.BRL.MIL> <3728@solo10.cs.vu.nl> <11320@smoke.BRL.MIL> <742@ccssrv.UUCP> <1989Oct19.162849.20265@utzoo.uucp> <11351@smoke.BRL.MIL> <14774@bfmny0.UU.NET> <11375@smoke.BRL.MIL>
Reply-To: tneff@bfmny0.UU.NET (Tom Neff)
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In article <11375@smoke.BRL.MIL> gwyn@brl.arpa (Doug Gwyn) writes:
>Yeah, well in fact several vendors have found it necessary to add their
>own, nonstandard, idiosyncratic support for [noalias].  

Good, now let's let it perk for a few years and see what pragmatic
wisdom evolves.  Everyone knows the word "noalias" and the general
idea; if implementations really are idiosyncratic it may mean that
the concept needs reshaping.

>                                                       Since we had already
>identified the requirement, is it really doing anybody a service to fail
>to standardize how this is done?  I would think quite the contrary.

So would IBM, indeed this is the classic IBM approach.  Knock domes in
Armonk and then descend the mountain bearing tablets graven with new
"standards" for the awed peasantry to scratch heads over.  Hence PL/I
and the two dollar bill.  :-)

>>It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a
>>standards committee to make up a useful language extension.
>
>I suppose you have some support for this statement?

Absolutely, it goes back to my grade school Religion class at Glenoaks
Elementary -- Los Angeles, 1966.  (State was going through one of its
occasional paroxysms of bonehead conservativism and decided to sneak
the kids a dose of Jahweh by the back door.)  You had two kinds to pick
from - RC and Protestant.  (This was before the Bhagwan.)  I went to the
Protestant; it was held in a nice neighborhood lady's living room.  Sunday
school is basically what it was.  She taught us the famous parable about
it being easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for
a rich man to enter the kingdom of Heaven.  But this was prosperous middle
class Protestant LA here, where being poor was downright un-American, so
she had a marvelous prop: mounted on the wall above the mantel was the
BIGGEST DAMN NEEDLE EYE you ever saw!  About three feet wide, just the
eye end of a huge wooden "needle" that supposedly dated from Biblical
times (replica more likely, or utterly bogus).  The idea was that THIS
was the needle Christ had in mind when he opened his mouth, you see.
Pretty HARD to pass a camel through there, but you just might do it...

So, that's the needle I'm referring to.  Not impossible to blue-sky
a durable new language feature in committee... just not the way to bet.

-- 
"Of course, this is a, this is a Hunt, you   |  Tom Neff
will -- that will uncover a lot of things.   |  tneff@bfmny0.UU.NET
You open that scab, there's a hell of a lot
of things... This involves these Cubans, Hunt, and a lot of hanky-panky
that we have nothing to do with ourselves." -- RN 6/23/72