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- From: geert@fozzie.sun3.iaf.nl (Geert Bosch)
- Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada,comp.lang.c,comp.lang.c++
- Subject: Re: C/C++ knocks the crap out of Ada
- Followup-To: comp.lang.ada,comp.lang.c,comp.lang.c++
- Date: 3 Mar 1996 12:46:51 +0100
- Organization: La Calandre Infortunee
- Message-ID: <4hc0rb$e9p@fozzie.sun3.iaf.nl>
- References: <JSA.96Feb16135027@organon.com> <1996Feb22.005518.13396@leeweyr.sccsi.com> <4gvrffINNlqo@anvil.ugrad.cs.ubc.ca> <4h4j31$1ga3@watnews1.watson.ibm.com> <4h5cbcINNahr@anvil.ugrad.cs.ubc.ca>
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-
- Kazimir Kylheku (c2a192@ugrad.cs.ubc.ca) wrote:
- `` So what law is there that prevents the same thing to be done with Ada?
- There is a GNU Ada compiler, too---is _that_ 100% compliant with the standards? ''
-
- Yes, it is.
-
- `` You can't force implementors to obey a standard. ''
-
- But you *can* make them more eager to do that, by having a well-defined
- standard and certification procedures. One necessary not allowing
- *extensions* like new syntactic constructs, and keywords to be part of
- a valid implementation of the language
-
- If there was a clear set of rules which precisely said what a C++
- compiler should do, and what it should not do and if there was a
- procedure to test a C++ compiler to those rules, compiler writers would
- be much more likely to try to conform to the standard. This would be
- especially true if the compiler could get the 'Officialy Validated C++
- Compiler' status. Although there never will be a 100% guarantee of
- compliance with the standard (complex compilers *always* have bugs), it
- would come close enough.
-
- The positive effect of this would would be that some of the better C++
- compiler writers would be trying hard to reach the status of 'Validated
- C++ Compiler' first.
-
- The other side of the story is this: do you really *want* to conform to
- a standard? Not conforming to a standard makes it relatively easy to
- be the first to implement new bell's 'n whistles, because you can get away
- with subtly breaking some rarely used parts of the standard language.
-
- Of course another advantage of trying to follow a floating standard, is
- that nobody will be able to get a good aim at you.
-
- Greetings,
- Geert
- --
- E-Mail: geert@sun3.iaf.nl *** Lbh whfg penpxrq ZvpebFbsg'f ***
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