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From: throopw@xyzzy.UUCP (Wayne A. Throop)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: 'C' Standards
Message-ID: <283@xyzzy.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 28-Sep-87 15:45:26 EDT
Article-I.D.: xyzzy.283
Posted: Mon Sep 28 15:45:26 1987
Date-Received: Tue, 29-Sep-87 07:12:18 EDT
References: <166@qetzal.UUCP> <157@hobbes.UUCP> <875@bsu-cs.UUCP>
Organization: Data General, RTP NC.
Lines: 35

> kent@xanth.UUCP (Kent Paul Dolan)
> You continue to espouse embedding hardware misfeatures into the C
> language standard.

Quite the reverse.  He espouses NOT embedding non-universal hardware
"features" into the C language standard, a different thing altogether.

>  Granted, the implementors of the resulting C
> compilers will be forced to take these abominations into account, but
> SO WILL EVERY C PROGRAMMER FOR GENERATIONS TO COME (those system
> developers you distinguish against).

No, they do *not* have to take the hardware misfeatures you disapprove
of into account.  They only have to take the standard into account.
That is, developers don't have to know about segments, or word-granular
pointers, or tagged pointers, or ringed architectures, or any such
transient things of the mundane, hardware world.  All they have to know
is what the standard says are the properties of addresses.  If they
adhere to the standard, they don't have to care what hardware they are
running on.  Which is as it should be.

(Granted, the standard *does* make certain assumptions, such as that the
compiled program is to run on a binary digital computer.  But some level
of assumption is unavoidable.  The point is that the standards committee
has, indeed, chosen a good level.)

--
Inigo hated it there.  Everybody was so dangerous, big, mean and
muscular, and so what if he was the greatest fencer in the world, who'd
know it to look at him?  He looked like a skinny Spanish guy it might be
fun to rob.  You couldn't walk around with a sign saying "Be careful,
this is the greatest fencer since the death of the Wizard of Corsica. Do
not burgle."
                        --- From The Princess Bride by William Goldman
-- 
Wayne Throop      <the-known-world>!mcnc!rti!xyzzy!throopw