Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!hao!gatech!mcnc!rti!xyzzy!throopw
From: throopw@xyzzy.UUCP (Usenet Administration)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: Kinds of code broken by ANSI C
Message-ID: <508@xyzzy.UUCP>
Date: 24 Dec 87 20:57:30 GMT
References: <4668@pyr.gatech.EDU> <2046@haddock.ISC.COM> <3724@hoptoad.uucp>
Organization: Data General, RTP NC.
Lines: 29

> gnu@hoptoad.uucp (John Gilmore)
> karl@haddock.ISC.COM (Karl Heuer) wrote:
>> Can you really find a lot of examples of code that will be broken (not just
>> deprecated) by the new standard?> 
> [... 1) extern scopeing rules made more regular ...] 
> [... 2) collisions with new keywords ...]
> [... 3) #if 0 elision of text not composed of proper tokens ...]
> [... 4) prototype parsing fallout impacts typedef use ...]
> I can show you Unix source code that uses all these features.

I don't doubt it.  But none of these seem hard to diagnose or fix, and
are of the level of problem one could run into in a new implementation
of a K&R compiler simply not based on a pcc descendant.  Also, while I
don't doubt the existance of these problems, I wonder about their
prevalence.

So: my opinion is still that this doesn't show ANSI C to break code much
worse than any new independant implementation of C could do, regardless
of the standard chosen.

> I will probably end up writing a paper for Usenix about it...

I look forward to it.  Such a paper will doubtless be of tremendous value.

--
There are some forms of insanity which, driven to an ultimate
expression, can become new models of sanity.
                        --- Bureau of Sabotage {Frank Herbert}
-- 
Wayne Throop      <the-known-world>!mcnc!rti!xyzzy!throopw