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From: gwyn@smoke.BRL.MIL (Doug Gwyn )
Newsgroups: comp.arch,comp.lang.c,comp.lang.misc
Subject: Re: Machine-independent intermediate languages
Message-ID: <8789@smoke.BRL.MIL>
Date: 28 Oct 88 16:05:04 GMT
Article-I.D.: smoke.8789
References: <e2uEl#2ORJzO=eric@snark.uucp> <853@goofy.megatest.uucp> <831@etive.ed.ac.uk> <10037@socslgw.csl.sony.JUNET>
Reply-To: gwyn@brl.arpa (Doug Gwyn (VLD/VMB) <gwyn>)
Organization: Ballistic Research Lab (BRL), APG, MD.
Lines: 14

In article <10037@socslgw.csl.sony.JUNET> diamond@csl.sony.JUNET (Norman Diamond) writes:
>The phrase "portable assembler" is unfortunately ambiguous.  This has
>led users to expect C PROGRAMS to be as portable as the language's
>SYNTAX.  Since their demands have been listened to, C is losing its
>original capabilities.

I'm not aware of any capabilities that have been lost.

>Anyone who wants to write portable PROGRAMS should use another language.

I have to take strong exception to this.  C probably offers more support
for writing significant portable programs than any other language.  It
has a nice balance of standardization and flexible accommodation of
variant machine architectures and environments.