Anyone on ANSI standard C

[Jack Waugh]

Here are my notes on  the  talk  on  ANSI  in  the  UNI-FORUM
session on standards (certainly subject to possible error):

ANSI  Techincal  Committee  X3J11  is  set  up  to consider a
standard for the C Programming Language.

Anyone may attend the meetings.  Voting is on a one  company,
one  vote  basis.  At any given meeting, any company that has
been at the previous two meetings gets a vote.  I don't  know
whether  there's a requirement that the same person represent
the same company or not.  If your company wants to  become  a
member  of  X3J11,  contact  Jim  Brodie  at Motorola, Tempe,
Arizona (I didn't get the ZIP).

The language the committee is working toward  certainly  will
closely  resemble  the  C that we all "know and love".  Among
the "daring extentions" being considered  are  argument  type
checking or coercion, and a "const" storage class.

"Const"  objects  could be stored in read-only space ("text",
in UNIX jargon).

The  argument  type  checking  would  be  based  on  function
declarations like the following examples:

     int strcmp((char *), (char *));
     void sync((void));

The second example means 'sync' can take no arguments at all,
whereas

     void sync();

would, as now, mean the programmer declines  to  specify  how
many and what type of arguments it takes.

The committee intends to try to get a draft out by the end of
1984, and the final standard by 1986.

end