Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!rutgers!cmcl2!brl-adm!brl-smoke!gwyn
From: gwyn@brl-smoke.ARPA (Doug Gwyn )
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: "Noalias" warning and questions
Message-ID: <7256@brl-smoke.ARPA>
Date: 12 Feb 88 19:53:51 GMT
References: <8012@elsie.UUCP> <10055@ulysses.homer.nj.att.com>
Reply-To: gwyn@brl.arpa (Doug Gwyn (VLD/VMB) <gwyn>)
Organization: Ballistic Research Lab (BRL), APG, MD.
Lines: 25

In article <10055@ulysses.homer.nj.att.com> cjc@ulysses.homer.nj.att.com (Chris Calabrese[rs]) writes:
>... I put all kinds of #define and #if and #ifdef
>sections into my code to make it portable.

To the extent that standardization can eliminate some of that,
it would be highly desirable.

>C is designed for systems work.  It is also designed to run on UNIX.

C is used for much more today than originally intended.  I would
bet that most C programming is targeted for non-UNIX systems now.
Certainly there is very little in the language proper that could
be construed as designed for UNIX, although the standard C library
is slanted slightly toward UNIX.  There are many who think that
even for systems use on UNIX, having a C standard would be of value.

>The ANSI board should not mire a perfectly good systems language
>which was designed to be the root of a particular operating system
>with all sorts of standard so that it can be used in environments
>and for aplications which it has no business being in.

It isn't the committee that is responsible for C being applied to
other situations than the one you think it should be used for.
Besides, the issue of optimization (which is what started this
discussion) is mostly application-independent.