Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!decwrl!wuarchive!emory!hubcap!ncrcae!ncr-sd!se-sd!rns
From: rns@se-sd.SanDiego.NCR.COM (Rick Schubert)
Newsgroups: comp.std.c
Subject: Re: X3J11 Pleasanton meeting summary
Keywords: X3J11 Pleasanton meeting C standard interpretations
Message-ID: <3985@se-sd.SanDiego.NCR.COM>
Date: 8 Oct 90 18:26:47 GMT
References: <13996@smoke.BRL.MIL> <26889@mimsy.umd.edu>
Organization: NCR Corporation, Systems Engineering - San Diego
Lines: 24

In <26889@mimsy.umd.edu> chris@mimsy.umd.edu (Chris Torek) writes:

>In article <13996@smoke.BRL.MIL> gwyn@smoke.BRL.MIL (Doug Gwyn)
>posts a number of interpretations, including:
>>	For scanf("%5e",&f) with next available input sequence "1.2e+4xy",
[produces a "matching failure" and the next unread character will be '4']

>A `matching failure'?  In other words, such a scanf() call would return 0,
>not 1?  `e+' is lost?

>Seriously, I think it is much better for the library to scan the number
>as `1.2' and leave the `e+4xy' unread.  This turns out not to be too
>difficult.

Note that at this point, the role of X3J11 is to interpret what the Standard
says, not what would be nice.  We are not even allowed to say "but we had
meant to say ..." if the Standard is unambiguous.  If there is an
ambiguity, we can resolve it based on demonstrated intent.

I don't know if the given interpretation is consistent with our original
intent.  If it is, I suspect that we made that decision to simplify the
specification of `scanf'.

-- Rick Schubert (rns@se-sd.sandiego.NCR.COM)