On Wed, 4 Jun 1997, Greg A. Woods wrote:

> Leaving things as they are results in the least work all around.

Sure, except for the fact that the way things are now is _broken_.  It
has been pointed out several times that our current system in no way
compensates for the difference in argument promotion between the two
languages, with the result that you _cannot_ use either interchangeably.

> > No, it simply means you need to have an ANSI compiler.  ANSI is 8
> > years old, which is approximately forever in computer time.
>
> But ANSI/ISO C is a different language.  The differences are subtle and
> very dangerous since they can only be detected at runtime (or with a
> good, true, lint).

But I would suggest that the majority of our programmers are more
comfortable in ANSI C, so in fact this danger is greater now than it
would be if we upgraded.  Indeed, several people have spoken of code
they have written but not submitted because they wrote it in ANSI C and
did not have time to backport it.  And many more are writing in ANSI C
and backporting to our __P() conventions, with all the reliability
problems that ensue.

> Changing the code won't make it better -- it will only make it harder to
> port.  The current style is an ideal compromise.

Far from being ideal, the current solution is _broken_, and results in
incorrect code.

--
				Jim Wise
				jim.wise@turner.com