Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cs.utexas.edu!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!snorkelwacker!spdcc!ima!haddock!karl
From: karl@haddock.ima.isc.com (Karl Heuer)
Newsgroups: comp.std.c
Subject: Re: dollar signs in identifiers (was: warning: '/*' within comment)
Message-ID: <16879@haddock.ima.isc.com>
Date: 14 Jun 90 02:50:19 GMT
References: <16812@haddock.ima.isc.com> <16490021@hpcllca.HP.COM> <13082@smoke.BRL.MIL>
Reply-To: karl@haddock.ima.isc.com (Karl Heuer)
Organization: Interactive Systems, Cambridge, MA 02138-5302
Lines: 25

In article <13082@smoke.BRL.MIL> gwyn@smoke.BRL.MIL (Doug Gwyn) writes:
>In article <16490021@hpcllca.HP.COM> walter@hpcllca.HP.COM (Walter Murray) writes:
>>I don't see how this can be a strictly conforming program.  [`$' need not be
>>a member of the source character set.]

I'll reluctantly concede that point.  (But see below.)

>Quite right; a strictly conforming program cannot use '$' in identifiers.

Not relevant; the program in question wasn't using it in an identifier.  That
was, in fact, the point: the Standard requires that any implementation in
which `$' is in the source character set (in practice, any implementation in
the ASCII-or-superset world) *must* accept the program and generate a result
contrary to what is produced by the traditional DEC or Apollo compilers.

>I stopped using ` characters in comments when I realized that they could
>impair portability.

I figure it's a Quality of Implementation issue.  An implementation that
disallows "`" in a comment probably won't survive long in a free market.
(And if some of the characters in my source file cause a change in shift
state when interpreted in the implementation's character set, then the vendor
had better supply a translator that maps my character set into his.)

Karl W. Z. Heuer (karl@ima.ima.isc.com or harvard!ima!karl), The Walking Lint