From: Brian Hechinger <wonko@4amlunch.net>

>i don't object to extentions to the language, but i do object to them not
>being
>properly added to the ANSI standard, the whole point of which was that it
>didn't
>matter what compiler you used, since they were all ANSI C compliant, your code
>Just Built(TM) on any of them.  that is so far from true today it's revolting.

As an assembly language bigot, I've really been getting a kick out of this.
My 80x86 assembly code from 1983 still works fine -- the current CPUs
are 99.44% backwards compatible, and thanks to all the hideous layers of
compatibility, most of the standard PC hardware still acts by default like
what's in an IBM 5150.

But it seems like moving C code around, even to a different OS on the same
architecture and often even to a new compiler on the same *OS*, never goes
smoothly, the compiler gags because of incompatible extensions and other
crap, actually the thing I trip on most is that the target compiler doesn't
like the order in which I #include the system header files, which in GCC's
case seems to lead to innumerable "parse error" messages (how helpful)
before it even gets to the first line of my own code.

I use C when I need portability and, well ... ?  I really like this idea
of pruning GCC into a decent ANSI-only compiler.  Seems like it ought to
make everybody happy...  And while resurrecting PCC might have some cosmic
grooviness, it has its own problems (when I tried to build GCC under 4.2BSD
ten years ago, PCC couldn't do it, and IIRC its complaints were mostly the
usual porting hallucinations rather than actual errors), and it seems that
when there are legal hassles involved, you can usually make faster progress
by writing fresh code than by sicking lawyers on disentangling the old stuff.
And it's cheaper for sure!

John Wilson
D Bit