Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!cmcl2!brl-adm!brl-smoke!gwyn
From: gwyn@brl-smoke.ARPA (Doug Gwyn )
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: Re: Verbose declarations proposal (Re: Address of Array)
Message-ID: <6910@brl-smoke.ARPA>
Date: 5 Jan 88 21:59:50 GMT
References: <6884@brl-smoke.ARPA> <1454@houdi.UUCP>
Reply-To: gwyn@brl.arpa (Doug Gwyn (VLD/VMB) <gwyn>)
Organization: Ballistic Research Lab (BRL), APG, MD.
Lines: 29

In article <1454@houdi.UUCP> marty1@houdi.UUCP (M.BRILLIANT) writes:
>My mailer (vn) doesn't say who this is from:

Me (Gwyn@BRL.MIL).

>> In article <1449@houdi.UUCP> marty1@houdi.UUCP (M.BRILLIANT) writes:
>>>I propose that the C language be extended to ...
>> Forget it.  There might have been some point in such a proposal a few
>> years ago, early in the standardization process, but it is far too late
>> for such a dramatic change in the language at this stage.
>Maybe it should remain anonymous.  What it says is that C is too old
>to change.  That is, it's a dead language and will be replaced rather
>than adapted.  Funny thing, they said that about FORTRAN.

I guess we're interpreting "the C language" in two different ways.
My interpretation was "the forthcoming C language standard".  Yours
may be "local experimental implementation".  There is nothing wrong
with experimenting with extensions to C, which might or might not
later be adopted in a revised C language standard (say, in the year
1998).  However, portable applications need to avoid relying on
such unofficial language features.

For example, I believe several vendors are contemplating adding a
"complex" data type to their C implementations, although for ANSI C
conformance that extension has to be disabled (it infringes on the
name space guaranteed to applications).

It is quite possible that instead of C-98 we might have a C++
standard by that time.