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From: ok@goanna.cs.rmit.oz.au (Richard A. O'Keefe)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c++,comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: Type Qualifier [volatile]
Message-ID: <3115@goanna.cs.rmit.oz.au>
Date: 31 May 90 04:24:39 GMT
References: <4275@infmx.UUCP> <1990May22.124936.5727@aucs.uucp> <54963@microsoft.UUCP>
Followup-To: comp.lang.c
Organization: Comp Sci, RMIT, Melbourne, Australia
Lines: 23

In article <4275@infmx.UUCP> briand@infmx.UUCP (brian donat) writes:
> When would a programmer want to explicitly use the 'auto' storage class? 
In article <54963@microsoft.UUCP>, mikero@microsoft.UUCP (Michael ROBIN) writes:
> Gee, don't you guys know anything? You use "auto" to line up your declarations:

I have been waiting for the people who were _there_ to answer, but so far
no-one has.  The answer is HISTORY.  C had 'storage' qualifiers BEFORE it
had types.  (Take a look at 'bc' some time.)  (At that time, it did not
have nested blocks.)  So you would write

	foo(a)			/* a is an int, foo returns int */
	    {
		static b;	/* b is a static int */
		auto c;		/* c is an "automatic" int */
		...
	    }

In fact you can still write your programs that way if you really want to.
C is descended from B which is derived from BCPL, in which there was one
type, "machine word" (which also served as pointer and float).
-- 
"A 7th class of programs, correct in every way, is believed to exist by a
few computer scientists.  However, no example could be found to include here."