Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!gauss.llnl.gov!casey
From: casey@gauss.llnl.gov (Casey Leedom)
Newsgroups: comp.std.c
Subject: Re: __STDC__ and non-conforming ANSI C compilers
Message-ID: <14856@lll-winken.llnl.gov>
Date: 22 Dec 88 03:15:44 GMT
References: <3236@pegasus.ATT.COM> <9167@smoke.BRL.MIL> <22765@watmath.waterloo.edu> <6093@hoptoad.uucp>
Sender: usenet@lll-winken.llnl.gov
Reply-To: casey@gauss.llnl.gov.UUCP (Casey Leedom)
Organization: Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
Lines: 27

[[I'm sending this just because I'm pissed at Apollo and the subject
conforms to the bitch.  If this has already been mentioned on this
subject thread, I'm sorry.  I just started looking at this group again
after a long absence.]]

  The Apollo SR10 compiler defines __STDC__.  It supports functional
prototyping.  It does not support any other feature of ANSI C that I know
of.  In particular, I know that it does not support the new "##"
preprocessor syntax to generate a null length break between preprocessor
macros.  This causes breakage in programs which have had a lot of
attention leveled at them to make them as portable as possible.  Apollo
has taken an already difficult conversion task (converting from K&R C to
ANSI C) and simply muddied the waters.  We will probably see

	#ifdef __STDC__
	#ifdef apollo
		...
	#else
		...
	#endif
	#endif

for many years to come because of this.  Three cheers for idiocy at
Apollo.  [[It should be noted that Apollo doesn't see any problem with the
described situation.  They don't feel that they are misusing the __STDC__
symbol.]]

Casey