Subject: Re: C Language Standard(s)
To: Rob Leland <leland@freetocreate.org>
From: Bill Sommerfeld <sommerfeld@orchard.medford.ma.us>
List: current-users
Date: 12/21/1995 09:58:52
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----

Can someone please name a processor which is interesting and powerful
enough to want to run NetBSD *AND* which doesn't have an ANSI C
compiler *AND* which can't run tools like "unproto" to convert ANSI C
prototypes into old-style definitions?

As best I can tell, "pure" K&R C is, for all practical purposes, dead;
we should not limit ourselves to the K&R subset of ANSI C -- it's far
too error prone. 

   Couldn't we compromise and "have our cake and eat it too" by having
   conditional function implementations?

"Been there, done that".

This is a maintainance nightmare.  Besides being really ugly, it's
also too easy, when changing function signatures, to either (a) forget
to change the "other" wing of the #ifdef, or (b) change it, but get it
wrong.

					- Bill

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: 2.6.1

iQCVAwUBMNl2JbT+rHlVUGpxAQH5igQAiDj8w5v3rvztSgT6h9MPljHTkGj3Ry+U
veWKSsrBkxB1ksPxMkN2MzSixFeRnMki+dyEslj8jQVTZkerOYeO55Muc7W+5muI
dEz2DvM3fC2eKyvGaTy9LWM7Qpic3aOqIPRDBtpjoiorIhLdKUHMoT97ZLQI+h9L
gMfaifuGa9Y=
=zcR6
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----