Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Path: utzoo!henry
From: henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: trigraphs in X3J11
Message-ID: <1988May25.212902.1904@utzoo.uucp>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
References: <5215@ico.ISC.COM>, <10949@apple.Apple.Com>
Date: Wed, 25 May 88 21:29:02 GMT

> ... What is the justification for breaking existing programs when the
> ability to include untypeable characters into strings already
> exists via the \xxx mechanism?  Instead of introducing a totally new notion
> (to C, anyway) of trigraphs, why not simply extend the backslash escape...

Because, for openers, backslash is one of those ASCII-specific characters
that you can't even *write* without trigraphs in some of the European
character sets.  I do wish people who want to sound off about this problem
would first spend some time understanding it!