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- Path: ix.netcom.com!news
- From: Bradd W. Szonye <bradds@ix.netcom.com>
- Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada,comp.lang.c,comp.lang.c++,comp.edu
- Subject: RE: ANSI C and POSIX (was Re: C/C++ knocks the crap out of Ada)
- Date: 19 Apr 1996 08:57:42 GMT
- Organization: Netcom
- Message-ID: <01bb2dce.8f2fad80$c6c2b7c7@Zany.localhost>
- References: <JSA.96Feb16135027@organon.com> <dewar.828757752@schonberg> <danpop.828819479@rscernix> <dewar.828879781@schonberg> <4k9qhe$65r@solutions.solon.com> <dewar.828936837@schonberg> <828964950snz@genesis.demon.co.uk> <4kbfup$2vd@news1.mnsinc.com> <4kbl5i$p3@mordred.gatech.edu> <4kbs17$6ts@news1.mnsinc.com> <dewar.829012748@schonberg>
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- X-NETCOM-Date: Fri Apr 19 3:57:42 AM CDT 1996
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-
-
- On Monday, April 08, 1996, Robert Dewar wrote...
- > Szu-Wen said
- >
- >
- > It's a joke, lighten up ;).
- >
- >
- > (referring to his comment about portability of behavior)
- >
- > Actually the joke is on you, because the comment you made is not a joke
- > at all but instead a very important point, around which a lot of
- language
- > design decisions focus.
- >
- > An obvous goal of any language design is to minimize or eliminate
- > undefined and non-deterministic behavior.
- >
- > These goals are often not net because of two important considerations:
- >
- > 1. Over specifying can lead to inefficient code (e.g. requiring left to
- > right evaluation)
- >
- > 2. Some features (low level bit twiddling, tasking, etc.) may make it
- > desirable semantically to introduce undefined or ND behavior.
- >
- > Debating the compromises here is a major activity of language design.
- >
- >
-
- True, those are goals of language design. However, they're not goals of
- language standarization. The goals of *that* are to codify existing
- practice. Throughout the C language, if it came to a choice between
- breaking existing code or leaving something undefined, ANSI made it
- undefined half the time and "implementation-defined" the other half. The
- demands of C programmers on the language's efficiency on the local machine
- made it harder still to come up with unbreakable rules.
-
- Bradd
-
-
-