Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!wuarchive!psuvax1!hsdndev!cmcl2!adm!smoke!gwyn
From: gwyn@smoke.brl.mil (Doug Gwyn)
Newsgroups: comp.std.c
Subject: Re: translation limits
Message-ID: <15780@smoke.brl.mil>
Date: 10 Apr 91 04:45:01 GMT
References: <14287@darkstar.ucsc.edu>
Organization: U.S. Army Ballistic Research Laboratory, APG, MD.
Lines: 16

In article <14287@darkstar.ucsc.edu> daniel@terra.ucsc.edu (Daniel Edelson) writes:
>From reading this section, it does not appear that a strictly conforming
>implementation needs to be able to translate and execute any program
>whatsoever, except for ``the one.''

Well, there are a lot of requirements in the standard that a conforming
implementation must meet; 2.2.4.1 is merely one of them.  It was not
feasible to require that all conforming implementations be able to
translate and execute ALL strictly conforming programs that do not
exceed ANY translation limit, which is what we would have liked to
specify.  Some otherwise reasonable implementations (for example, on
16-bit processors) were deemed unable to make such a guarantee.

It is most unlikely that any implementation would be able to handle
"the one" implementor-provided program yet not be able to handle
programs such as your example.