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From: libes@cme.nist.gov (Don Libes)
Newsgroups: comp.std.c
Subject: Re: Order to pragma chaos (was Re: Another sizeof question)
Message-ID: <8538@muffin.cme.nist.gov>
Date: 4 Dec 90 06:03:09 GMT
References: <13171@crdgw1.crd.ge.com> <12570055@hpclscu.HP.COM> <ERU.90Nov23145007@tnvsu1.tele.nokia.fi>
Distribution: comp
Organization: National Institute of Standards and Technology
Lines: 31

In article <ERU.90Nov23145007@tnvsu1.tele.nokia.fi> eru@tnvsu1.tele.nokia.fi (Erkki Ruohtula) writes:
>There could be a clearing-house where implementors could send questions
>like "I want to add a special feature X. What kind of a pragma (if any) has
>been used for it before? if none, I intend to use #pragma ZZZ".
>The clearing-house would send back either a suggestion about an existing
>pragma, or tell the implementor to go ahead with his own idea (and archive
>it for later queries). It would have the process these queries fairly
>quickly to be useful, but this is possible if we stick to the idea that
>the implementors suggestions for new pragmas are accepted without worldwide
>discussion.
>
>Implementors would also be asked to report if they improve the pragma they got
>(for example, in the pack case, adding an optional number to specify that data
>must be aligned to offsets divisible by that number should be reported).
>The collected pragmas would be viewed as recommendations, not part of the
>standard.

Rex Jaeshke has written several articles titled "Pragmania" in the
Journal of C Language Translation.  The articles report the results
of implementors surveyed for the pragmas they support.

This is even better than the clearing-house concept you suggest, since
I can make the decisions rather than someone who doesn't know about my
peculiar environment.  Plus, by seeing other pragmas, I get a good
feel for how people are using pragmas in general.

Since Rex will probably continue to regularly update "Pragmania", I
encourage you to send him description of your pragmas (especially
those really obscene ones).

Don Libes          libes@cme.nist.gov      ...!uunet!cme-durer!libes