Path: utzoo!utgpu!utstat!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!ucsd!rutgers!cmcl2!adm!smoke!gwyn
From: gwyn@smoke.BRL.MIL (Doug Gwyn )
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: Max line length (was Re: programming challenge ...)
Message-ID: <9843@smoke.BRL.MIL>
Date: 13 Mar 89 04:35:20 GMT
References: <2102@jasper.UUCP> <207600017@s.cs.uiuc.edu> <9777@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU>
Reply-To: gwyn@brl.arpa (Doug Gwyn (VLD/VMB) <gwyn>)
Organization: Ballistic Research Lab (BRL), APG, MD.
Lines: 17

In article <9777@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU> jfc@athena.mit.edu (John F Carr) writes:
>What is the longest line allowed in a C program?

It depends on the implementation (naturally).

>Does the standard say?

A conforming implementation must accept a program containing 509 characters
in a logical source line.  A "logical source line" is what results after
lines ending in a \ are spliced with the following physical source line.
Constraints on physical source line length are left up to various
implementations; I wouldn't recommend relying on more than 80 characters
(not counting newline).

>Do present compilers care?

Certainly many of them do.