Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!steinmetz!davidsen
From: davidsen@steinmetz.ge.com (William E. Davidsen Jr)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: trigraphs in X3J11
Message-ID: <10987@steinmetz.ge.com>
Date: 25 May 88 14:35:08 GMT
References: <5215@ico.ISC.COM> <7937@brl-smoke.ARPA> <10941@steinmetz.ge.com> <10326@ulysses.homer.nj.att.com>
Reply-To: davidsen@crdos1.UUCP (bill davidsen)
Organization: General Electric CRD, Schenectady, NY
Lines: 24

I'm not asking for the removal of the feature, I'm pointing out that it
is currently done in a way which breaks existing programs, and that
there are ways to prevent that from happening.

I was on the committe for the first two years, and I can't find any
references to trigraphs in my old notes. Bill Plauger's original comment
on things like this (from my notes on the Washington meeting) was that
"we should not egregiously break existing programs." I think that the
current implementation is a major deviation from that philosophy,
justified only if there is no other way.

As for last minute things, the vendors wanted to add noalias at the last
minute to allow better code generation (I actually didn't object to
that) so changing the implementation of a feature which (a) no one is
currently using, and (b) breaks existing programs is certainly NOT an
impossibility.

Please remember the A in ANSI stands for American, as does the A in
ASCII. In an effort to make this a viable international standard, X3J11
may not have considered the impact of this implementation.
-- 
	bill davidsen		(wedu@ge-crd.arpa)
  {uunet | philabs | seismo}!steinmetz!crdos1!davidsen
"Stupidity, like virtue, is its own reward" -me