Newsgroups: comp.std.c
Path: utzoo!henry
From: henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: Goals of X3J11 (was Re: directory handling in ansi C)
Message-ID: <1989Nov24.184804.2585@utzoo.uucp>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
References: <13288@s.ms.uky.edu> <11659@smoke.BRL.MIL> <1989Nov21.235640.3662@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu> <1751@crdos1.crd.ge.COM> <481@mwtech.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 24 Nov 89 18:48:04 GMT

In article <481@mwtech.UUCP> martin@mwtech.UUCP (Martin Weitzel) writes:
>Following the discussion up to this point, I don't want to continue,
>but I whished the committee had left out the C-stdlib completly on the
>first run and later defined this item in several subsets, to which the
>C-implementations could seperatly conform (or not).

The trouble is, if you have N optional packages that are part of the
standard, then you have 2^N different "standard" languages.  COBOL tried
this.  Looking at the results of that experience was, I believe, one of
the things that influenced X3J11 in its decision to avoid that approach
and try to produce *one* standard.

(Actually they ended up with a standard and a "freestanding" subset, but
that's close enough and there were good reasons for it.)

For all practical purposes the more basic library functions are part of
the language.
-- 
That's not a joke, that's      |     Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
NASA.  -Nick Szabo             | uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry@zoo.toronto.edu