Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!rutgers!ucla-cs!oberon!nunki.usc.edu!jeenglis
From: jeenglis@nunki.usc.edu (Joe English)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: Max line length (was Re: programming challenge ...)
Message-ID: <3072@nunki.usc.edu>
Date: 15 Mar 89 22:31:31 GMT
References: <2102@jasper.UUCP> <207600017@s.cs.uiuc.edu> <9777@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU> <1166@auspex.UUCP>
Reply-To: jeenglis@nunki.usc.edu (Joe English)
Organization: University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA
Lines: 44


guy@auspex.UUCP (Guy Harris) writes:
>Well, there's no standard, there's just a proposed standard, but the
>December 7, 1988 draft, which is probably now the proposed standard (and
>which is probably going to be very similar to the final standard) says:
>
>	2.2.4.1 Translation limits
>
>	   The implementation shall be able to translate and execute at
>	least one program that contains at least one instance of every
        ^^^^^ ^^^ ^^^^^^^
>	one of the following limits:
>

Huh?  Now I'm probably reading this wrong, but the way I
parse this sentence it means:

 If (there exists a program P such that
        (     (for all L in {following limits} P contains an instance of L)
          and (the implementation can deal with P)
        )
    )
 then the implementation is in compliance with section 2.2.4.1.


Shouldn't it say instead:

  If (for all programs P such that 
            (there exists an L in {following limits} such that P contains L)
      the implementation can handle P
     )
  then the implementation is in compliance with section 2.2.4.1?

Put simply, if I write a compiler that will correctly
translate and execute *one* program that contains a 509-character
line, a 31-character identifier, and so on, but barfs
on all other programs, does that pass 2.2.4.1?

(Obviously the answer is "no," and I've misinterpreted the
excerpt.  Can someone explain the language here?)

--Joe English

  jeenglis@nunki.usc.edu