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From: diamond@jit533.swstokyo.dec.com (Norman Diamond)
Newsgroups: comp.std.c
Subject: Re: How to write Trigraph like character sequences in a string
Message-ID: <1991Jun5.005958.9597@tkou02.enet.dec.com>
Date: 5 Jun 91 00:59:58 GMT
References: <1991May31.014720.2477@tkou02.enet.dec.com> <1991May31.133330.1149@roundup.crhc.uiuc.edu> <1991Jun3.011539.17430@tkou02.enet.dec.com> <16332@smoke.brl.mil>
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Reply-To: diamond@jit533.enet@tkou02.enet.dec.com (Norman Diamond)
Organization: Digital Equipment Corporation Japan , Tokyo
Lines: 31

In article <16332@smoke.brl.mil> gwyn@smoke.brl.mil (Doug Gwyn) writes:
>In article <1991Jun3.011539.17430@tkou02.enet.dec.com> diamond@jit533.enet@tkou02.enet.dec.com (Norman Diamond) writes:
>>...  And if you need trigraphs in the first place, then (7) is the ONLY ...
>
>Actually, one never NEEDS trigraphs; they're required to be supported as a
>convenience when interchanging source code among sites or equipment with
>poor support for the C source character set.

Well, if one has equipment with poor support for the C source character set,
then one either NEEDS trigraphs, or (worse) one needs to use a human-readable
and human-writable graphic mechanism that will be ad-hoc because the committee
refused to standardize one.  Anyway, clearly I was referring to cases with
equipment that does not support the C character set (and to cases where the
implementation is designed for such equipment, even if such equipment is not
used at that moment).

>However, all conforming
>implementations MUST support the full C source character set (as specified
>in X3.159-1989 section 2.2.1) in addition to trigraph sequences (2.2.1.1).

Does this mean that in a national character set that doesn't have [|\ etc.,
and a proposed implementation accepts the entire national character set
plus trigraphs, failure to support [|\ etc. through direct means without
trigraphs will make the implementation non-conforming?

I thought that the exact opposite of this was previously decided, that
trigraphs were sufficient in such cases.
--
Norman Diamond       diamond@tkov50.enet.dec.com
If this were the company's opinion, I wouldn't be allowed to post it.
Permission is granted to feel this signature, but not to look at it.