Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!rutgers!sunybcs!boulder!hao!oddjob!mimsy!umd5!brl-adm!brl-smoke!gwyn
From: gwyn@brl-smoke.ARPA (Doug Gwyn )
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: \"major adjustments\" in ANS C
Message-ID: <6997@brl-smoke.ARPA>
Date: 8 Jan 88 11:57:10 GMT
References: <11179@brl-adm.ARPA>
Reply-To: gwyn@brl.arpa (Doug Gwyn (VLD/VMB) <gwyn>)
Organization: Ballistic Research Lab (BRL), APG, MD.
Lines: 25

In article <11179@brl-adm.ARPA> lcc.marks@SEAS.UCLA.EDU (Mark Seecof) writes:
>Changes in the second draft should address deficiencies in the
>first.  Proposed changes from the previous standard (in this case
>K&R) should be in the first draft, so that people can comment on
>them early.

Point well taken, except please note that all the changes I can
recall have been prompted by the first set of public comments,
or at least were asked for there.  Even "noalias" resulted from
trying to deal with the aliasing issue which was raised by some
public comment (I forget which), even if the committee actually
would have tackled this anyway on their own initiative.

Certainly there were many requests to "honor parentheses".  We
kept turning them down until finally someone (I recall who, but
don't want to name him) pointed out that it wasn't as serious a
change as we had been thinking.  The ISO demand for it was the
last push it took to get us to accede to this common request.

As to ignoring ISO requests/demands, few people think it would
be a good idea for the ANSI and ISO standards to differ.  Like
it or not, most major computer vendors these days are dealing
with an international marketplace, so they will have to provide
ISO-compliant compilers.  I sympathize with what you say, but
that's not the way the committee chose to handle this.