NetNews Offline 2/NetNews Offline Volume 2.iso/news/comp/std/c/537

Text File | 1996-08-06 | 3.4 KB | 67 lines

Path: gabi-soft.fr!usenet
From: [e-mail] (J. Kanze)
Newsgroups: gnu.misc.discuss,comp.std.c
Subject: Re: Coding Standards are ignorant
Date: 08 Mar 1996 11:57:19 GMT
Organization: GABI Software, Sarl.
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
References: <4gum82$[e-mail]>
    <[e-mail]>
    <4he37i$[e-mail]> <4hf9m1$[e-mail]>
    <4hfecl$[e-mail]>
    <[e-mail]> <danpop.826218405@rscernix>
NNTP-Posting-Host: gabi.gabi-soft.fr
In-reply-to: [e-mail]'s message of 7 Mar 96 17:06:45 GMT

In article <danpop.826218405@rscernix> [e-mail] (Dan Pop)
writes:

|> In <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (James Kanze US/ESC 60/3/141 #40763) writes:

|> >In article <4hfecl$[e-mail]> [e-mail]
|> >(Peter Seebach) writes:
|> >
|> >|> In article <4hf9m1$[e-mail]>,
|> >|> Thomas Koenig <[e-mail]> wrote:
|> >|> >In comp.std.c, [e-mail] (Peter Seebach) wrote:
|> >
|> >|> >>It is, in no place, unreasonable to assume that C means "ANSI C".
|> >
|> >|> >I usually prefer "ISO C", but that's a very minor point, I think :-)
|> >
|> >|> Yes, especially since ANSI adopted ISO's standard.  They are expected
|> >|> to be identical, except for the occasional lag between meetings of one
|> >|> and meetings of the other.
|> >
|> >I don't think that that was Thomas' point.  If you look at our email
|> >domains, you will realize that with regards to standardization, ANSI
|> >has about the same weight as K&R for us:-).  An ANSI standard is a
|> >standard in the United States, but not, or at least not de jura,
|> >elsewhere.  (In practice, of course, in the absense of a competing ISO
|> >standard, ANSI standards tend to become de facto standards even here.)

|> I think that the point is missed by both Thomas and James.  Everybody
|> agrees that the C standard is the ISO one.  However, the name that caught
|> on is _ANSI_ C whether we Europeans like it or not.  I have yet to see
|> a C book with the string "ISO C" on its cover.  Except for relatively
|> few people, "ISO C" is rather meaningless to the C users community,  while
|> "ANSI C" denotes the language described in K&R2.  Compiler documentation
|> keeps talking about ANSI conformance and -ansi options are quite popular.

We didn't miss it, we just don't agree:-).  Except for a relatively few
people, a program with `void main()' is a legal ANSI C program, too.
IMHO, talking about ANSI C is about the same as writing `void main()';
it generally works, and most people/compilers will know what you are
talking about, but that doesn't make it right.

With regards to the -ansi options: for the most part, they just turn on
function prototyping, and maybe make a few changes in the preprocessor.
They don't necessarily make the compiler ISO conformant.  (On at least
one of my compilers, to get anything close to ISO conformance, the
option is `-ansi -pendantic', and not just -ansi.)
--
James Kanze           ([phone]          email: [e-mail]
GABI Software, Sarl., 8 rue des Francs Bourgeois, 67000 Strasbourg, France
Conseils, Θtudes et rΘalisations en logiciel orientΘ objet --
              -- A la recherche d'une activitΘ dans une region francophone