Xref: utzoo news.software.b:4678 comp.unix.xenix:11406
Newsgroups: news.software.b,comp.unix.xenix
Path: utzoo!utstat!geoff
From: geoff@utstat.uucp (Geoff Collyer)
Subject: Re: Compiling C News using GCC without '-traditional'
Message-ID: <1990May6.084852.9681@utstat.uucp>
Organization: Statistics, U. of Toronto
References: <1990May5.052300.965@dallnix.uucp>
Date: Sun, 6 May 90 08:48:52 GMT

To quote the paragraph on ANSI C which immediately precedes the one on
gcc in notebook/problems:

  Although we made an effort to be ANSI-C compatible,
  lack of access to a real ANSI C compiler limits our ability to do this.
  A secondary problem is that it's really very difficult to get code that
  is 100% acceptable to both ANSI C compilers and older compilers.
  Some issues inevitably got resolved in favor of current compilers,
  and may cause complaints from ANSI C compilers.

We had too many complaints from people trying to compile C news with
"gcc -ansi", due to the problems of making code acceptable to both
Classic and ANSI (and alleged ANSI) compilers, so we backed out most
of our attempts at explicit ANSI support.  I take the view that one
should always compile C news using a Classic compiler if possible,
since that's what Henry and I have.  (And no, gcc doesn't yet count as
a ``real ANSI C compiler'', sorry.)
-- 
Geoff Collyer		utzoo!utstat!geoff, geoff@utstat.toronto.edu