Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-lcc!ncis.llnl.gov!helios.ee.lbl.gov!pasteur!agate!bionet!ig!arizona!mike
From: mike@arizona.edu (Mike Coffin)
Newsgroups: comp.std.c
Subject: Re: Re: Re: __STDC__ and non-conforming ANSI C compilers
Message-ID: <8792@megaron.arizona.edu>
Date: 20 Jan 89 01:26:34 GMT
References: <9445@smoke.BRL.MIL>
Organization: U of Arizona CS Dept, Tucson
Lines: 23

This is really getting messy.  I originally advocated setting
__STDC__ = 0 to indicate "almost ANSI", or "so close to ANSI we doubt
if you'll notice."  This was rejected essentially on the grounds that
if you set it to 0 it is easy to write code that accidentally thinks
that it is 1.  (I.e., using #ifdef instead of #if.)

Now people are instead advocating setting it to 1 even if the compiler
is nonconforming, so long as the non-conformance is "minor" or
"harmless."  Yuk!  I think it is a BIG mistake to define
__STDC__ = 1 if the compiler is nonconforming.  Please don't lie to
my code.

We started by arguing that "#ifdef __STDC__" should guarantee that the
compiler is conforming --- no ifs ands or buts.  The point was made
that if it wasn't ANSI, no one knows WHAT it might be.  Now we're
saying that even if you carefully write "#if __STDC__ = 1", you can't
expect to get ANSI compliance.

This sounds very bad.
-- 
Mike Coffin				mike@arizona.edu
Univ. of Ariz. Dept. of Comp. Sci.	{allegra,cmcl2}!arizona!mike
Tucson, AZ  85721			(602)621-2858