Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!rutgers!ucla-cs!zen!ucbvax!ucsfcgl!pixar!unicom!physh
From: physh@unicom.UUCP (Jon 'Quality in - Quantity out' Foreman)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: (So-Called) ANSI C
Message-ID: <228@unicom.UUCP>
Date: 24 Dec 87 09:00:37 GMT
References: <4668@pyr.gatech.EDU> <495@xyzzy.UUCP> <9930@mimsy.UUCP>
Reply-To: unicom!physh
Organization: Halcon Co. et al., via College of Marin in California.
Lines: 27
Keywords: C D twists wrinkles mutilation
Summary: I'm losing the faith (is it really C?)

>In article <4668@pyr.gatech.EDU> roy@pyr.gatech.EDU (Roy Mongiovi) writes:
>I thought the purpose of X3J11 was to standardize on the existing
>C language.  It seems to me, however, that so many old twists have
>been removed, so many new wrinkles have been added, and so many
>existing C programs broken by the so-called standard that it is
>no longer the same language.

	Its funny you should post that.  I was just writing the same 
letter.  Perhaps, we could call the new standard "D", and leave all
the existing C code alone.

	I can't help feeling (gut reaction) that the ANSI standard is
is going to make it harder to port old code to new than it was to port
code from one machine to another.  It probably isn't true (yet) but may
become so if the committee keeps adding special interest keywords.

	If there is even one instance of a language incompatibilty that
cannot be fixed automatically (without human intervention) in either
direction (old to ANSI), then I will conclude that the ANSI effort was
a failure, since they will have defined a different language than the
one we are all using now.

	Jon Foreman
-- 
ucbvax!pixar!\            | For small letters  | ~~~~~~~\~~~   That's spelled
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