Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!yale!mintaka!spdcc!ima!haddock!karl
From: karl@haddock.ima.isc.com (Karl Heuer)
Newsgroups: comp.std.c
Subject: Re: C on IBM machines
Message-ID: <18089@haddock.ima.isc.com>
Date: 21 Sep 90 19:29:02 GMT
References: <1990Aug30.164610.3519@zoo.toronto.edu> <13714@smoke.BRL.MIL> <	<MEISSNER.90Aug31102441@osf.osf.org>> <13719@smoke.BRL.MIL> <1762 <268@cadlab.sublink.ORG>
Reply-To: karl@kelp.ima.isc.com (Karl Heuer)
Organization: Interactive Systems, Cambridge, MA 02138-5302
Lines: 12

In article <268@cadlab.sublink.ORG> staff@cadlab.sublink.ORG (Alex Martelli) writes:
>the point is, rather, that if you have a beautiful portable C application,
>and relish the thought of getting the beeg moola application SW on mainframes
>goes for, you'd BETTER think about problems related to portability to
>non-ASCII machines.

Ideally, yes.  Though if you inherit a bunch of ASCII-specific code, it may
well turn out that the path of least resistance is to use an implementation
that emulates ASCII via transliteration inside the I/O calls.  (Provided the
application distinguishes between text and binary fopen()...)

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