Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!wuarchive!usc!samsung!think!ames!pasteur!agate!saturn!sidney
From: sidney@saturn.ucsc.edu (Sidney Markowitz )
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: (* func)(fred, bert)
Message-ID: <9861@saturn.ucsc.edu>
Date: 23 Nov 89 19:58:05 GMT
References: <2387@stl.stc.co.uk> <744@lakart.UUCP> <0175@sheol.UUCP> <11664@smoke.BRL.MIL> <1736@l.cc.purdue.edu>
Reply-To: sidney@saturn.ucsc.edu (Sidney Markowitz )
Organization: University of California, Santa Cruz
Lines: 17

In article <1736@l.cc.purdue.edu> cik@l.cc.purdue.edu (Herman Rubin) writes:
>To get 100% portable code, it is necessary to be absolutely sure that
>the same results occur in all installations.  For C, this would mean
>that all arithmetic be integer arithmetic, [...etc. ...]

Real programs have a purpose, and 100% portable code merely has to
achieve that purpose on any system for which the purpose makes sense.
But that should be obvious, as should be the usefulness of a set of
standards that makes it easier for programmers to get their programs
to run on multiple systems.

>Herman Rubin, Dept. of Statistics, Purdue Univ., West Lafayette IN47907

Maybe these notions of practicality are unfamiliar to one in the
rarified world of academic mathematics.

-- sidney markowitz <sidney@saturn.ucsc.edu>