Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!hao!oddjob!gargoyle!ihnp4!laidbak!guardian From: guardian@laidbak.UUCP (Harry Skelton) Newsgroups: comp.lang.c Subject: Re: 'C' Standards Message-ID: <1141@laidbak.UUCP> Date: Fri, 11-Sep-87 11:07:18 EDT Article-I.D.: laidbak.1141 Posted: Fri Sep 11 11:07:18 1987 Date-Received: Sat, 12-Sep-87 18:06:19 EDT References: <166@qetzal.UUCP> <157@hobbes.UUCP> <875@bsu-cs.UUCP> <2196@xanth.UUCP> <181@sas.UUCP> Reply-To: guardian@laidbak.UUCP Organization: Lachman Associates, Inc., Naperville, IL Lines: 51 Keywords: MSC,NULL segments Summary: No rules allowed In article <181@sas.UUCP> bts@sas.UUCP (Brian T. Schellenberger) writes: > >I emphatically disagree. The point of standards is to allow people to get >useful work done -- useful applications that need to work in lots of >different environments. If you don't care about portability, you don't care >about standards. If you *do* care about portability, you care about making >the standards work on the widest possible variaty of machines that it can >work on without doing true violence to the language. > >Sure, some whiz-bang gizmos will work better in your native environment. And >I'll bet that some other things work better in the environment that has >trouble with setjmp/longjmp. Yet the standard disallows both bells, so the >same code works on both machines. And that's precisely why a standard is >useful. >-- > --Brian. >(Brian T. Schellenberger) ...!mcnc!rti!sas!bts > It's hard to think that some people use the word 'standards' to address what can only work in the environment that they have access to. I agree with Brian in that if you work at setting up a program to work in a 'standard' that it should be created to work under as many environments as possible. This would address both the newest version of Unix to the old ( by someone's standard - brain damaged ) versions of Unix. I think that in the realm of public domain, such as Usenet, that programs or information that is to be considered 'standard' should apply to items that can address as many machines and/or versions of an OS as possible. I don't think the term 'standard' should be used to set guidelines in which to program by but rather to term the portability of a program or function or to discribe the actions of a program. Setting a standard for programming will only limit things and cause great outcry (such as been seen on this net). If you want to set a standard, how about just saying what will work under certain conditions and under different versions of an OS. Some of us don't have the money to purchase new versions of an OS every time it is released. I feel well enough knowing that what I make is upward compatable untill a major OS change makes it necessary for me to upgrade. #include .---------. Harry Skelton : .-. : --- other mail drops --- guardian@laidbak.UUCP : `-'o : ihnp4!laidbak!ugh!bear ihnp4!laidbak!guardian : O : ihnp4!chinet!guardian `---------' As in the words of Socretes: "I drank wha*.........."