Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!att!pacbell.com!decwrl!world!wmm
From: wmm@world.std.com (William M Miller)
Newsgroups: comp.std.c++
Subject: Re: ANSI C++
Message-ID: <1991May11.195908.16439@world.std.com>
Date: 11 May 91 19:59:08 GMT
References: <1991May9.210846.10508@fmrco>
Organization: Glockenspiel, Ltd.
Lines: 39

harold@fmrco (Harold Naparst) writes:
> What is the status of ANSI C++ ?  Is is a standard, or just
> a proposed standard ?

Neither, yet.  A committee, X3J16, was formed in December of 1989 and is
meeting three times a year, with lots of informal activity outside the
regular meetings.  In addition, an ISO working group for C++, WG21, has been
authorized; their organizational meeting will be held in conjunction with
the next X3J16 meeting next month in Lund, Sweden.  The best guess for
public review of a draft proposed standard is probably late 1993 or early
1994.

> What is the basis of ANSI C++ ?  Is it the same as AT+T 2.1,
> or is it not compatible with it ?

The base documents adopted by X3J16 are the AT&T 2.1 reference manual (note
that several features described in that manual were not actually implemented
by release 2.1 of cfront; release 3.0 of cfront will conform much more
closely to the 2.1 specification) and X3.159-1989, the ANSI C Standard.  In
July, 1990, the committee adopted wholesale all the changes (there weren't
many) from the base document reflected in the first printing of _The
Annotated C++ Reference Manual_, by Margaret Ellis and Bjarne Stroustrup
(Addison/Wesley), which explains the technically-inaccurate but
functionally-correct logo "ANSI Base Document" emblazoned on the cover of
the book.  Since then, there have been two major additions to the language
(templates and exceptions, both in virtually identical form to the
description in the commentary sections of E&S) and a number of minor
corrections, nearly all of which are reflected in the third printing of E&S
and which were described in a posting by Bjarne Stroustrup last November.

> How compatible is G++ with the ANSI C++ standard ?

I'll leave this question to people more familiar with G++ (with a note that
it's inappropriate to talk about compatibility with a nonexistent standard;
there won't be an "ANSI-compatible C++ compiler" until there's an ANSI
standard -- at least).

-- William M. Miller, Glockenspiel, Ltd.; vice chair, X3J16
   wmm@world.std.com