Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!yale!hsdndev!cmcl2!adm!smoke!gwyn
From: gwyn@smoke.brl.mil (Doug Gwyn)
Newsgroups: comp.std.c
Subject: Re: A question about tenative definitions
Message-ID: <15410@smoke.brl.mil>
Date: 10 Mar 91 19:53:10 GMT
References: <4218@lupine.NCD.COM> <1807@svin02.info.win.tue.nl> <4228@lupine.NCD.COM>
Organization: U.S. Army Ballistic Research Laboratory, APG, MD.
Lines: 12

In article <4228@lupine.NCD.COM> rfg@NCD.COM (Ron Guilmette) writes:
>If it *was* the intent of x3j11 to do things in the traditional manner,
>I think that they should have worded 3.7.2  so that that would have been
>more clear.

"Tentative definition" is inherently a kludgy notion.
However, it is irrelevant to the actual issue, which was whether
or not a "relaxed ref/def" model could be used for external linkage
by a conforming implementation.  The answer is, yes, it is permitted,
because programs that exploit this conforming extension do not have
to violate a syntax rule or constraint to do so.  However, such
programs are definitely not strictly conforming programs.