Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!ima!think!barmar
From: barmar@think.COM (Barry Margolin)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: \"major adjustments\" in ANS C
Message-ID: <14498@think.UUCP>
Date: 8 Jan 88 21:01:10 GMT
References: <11179@brl-adm.ARPA>
Sender: usenet@think.UUCP
Reply-To: barmar@sauron.think.com.UUCP (Barry Margolin)
Organization: Thinking Machines Corporation, Cambridge, MA
Lines: 47

In article <11179@brl-adm.ARPA> lcc.marks@SEAS.UCLA.EDU (Mark Seecof) writes:
>  I wish the Committee would remember that
>their task is to create an American National Standard, not an
>international standard.

There is an enormous amount of pressure for American standards to
conform to ISO standards.  This didn't happen with Pascal, and it
really confuses things, much the same as the problems caused by the
two current major Unix versions (Berkeley and AT&T).  X3J11 will have
to do quite a bit of convincing to get X3 to approve a standard that
is known to differ from the ISO version.

>  If ISO, due to inferior comprehension
>of the issues involved, can't stand the K&R parentheses rule
>they can just make a little change in the ANS standard and
>adopt that.  To phrase it another way... the ANSI Committee should
>do things the right way even if others want to do things the wrong
>way.  This kind of blackmail (do it my way or I won't adopt your
>standard) should be given exactly the respect it deserves--none.

You talk as if ISO is some type of dictatorial organization.  ISO
technical committees are made up of representatives from all the
national standards committees, with each country having one vote.

A similar comment goes to all the people blasting X3J11 for screwing
up the language, making it unusable and unimplementable.  Who do you
think makes up X3J11?  It's just a collection of compiler developers
and users.  "Noalias" presumably got added because a number of users
felt they needed a way to advise the compiler about an optimization
and the developers felt they could implement this.  Standards
committee members do not come from an ivory tower, they are mostly
representatives from the trenches, people just like us, who feel they
understand the issues.  Of course, they are fallible, which is why
ANSI and ISO procedures include the public review requirements.

>The compiler manufacturers will adhere to the better (hopefully
>ANS) standard anyway, so there's no danger involved.

More likely, they will adhere to the one that is more popular among
customers.  Of course, there is a chicken/egg problem, since customers
are influenced by vendor marketing.  But if a vendor has a sizeable
non-US market, this will probably be the ISO standard.
Barry Margolin
Thinking Machines Corp.

barmar@think.com
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