Conformant Arrays in C (the Fortran Hack)

[Wayne A. Throop]

> ok at quintus.UUCP (Richard A. O'Keefe)
>> throopw at xyzzy.UUCP (Wayne A. Throop)
>> Now it seems to me that, allowing non-constant expressions in the bounds
>> of formal array arguments is the minimal, conservative, non-dope-vector,
>> covers-most-bases solution.
> What are the differences between this and the C.A.P. proposal, other than
> the fact that GNU CC is said to support it, so that this proposal *is*
> prior art, and the C.A.P. proposal isn't?
> 
> (1) This is exactly the Fortran approach.  There is lots of experience
>     with it, and the numerical people for whose sake the C.A.P. proposal
>     was made will already be familiar with it.

This first point hits the nail directly on the head.  At this stage of
standardization, it seems a Bad Idea to build a paper-mache feature on
top of a plaster-of-paris patch to a weak point in the original K&R
version of the language.  I mean, we are treading on ground related to
array "promotion" to pointers to start with, and are tacking on dubious
and unproven syntax in a newly-proposed portion of the language
(prototypes), and an area for which alternative proposals are likely to
be made (for handling passing arrays by-value, for example).  This
definitely seems the wrong time to be tinkering around in this
particular area in this particular fashion.  Allowing non-constant
expressions in this context doesn't alter the syntax much, and seems a
safer step to take.

But of course, I'm *really* upset that nobody blanched at my
demonstration of how to shoehorn a loop into the body of a
value-returning macro, to get iterated by-name evaluation.  I guess you
folks have stronger stomachs that I gave y'all credit for...

--
The LISP programmer knows the value of everything, but the cost of nothing.
                                        --- Alan J. Perlis
-- 
Wayne Throop      <the-known-world>!mcnc!rti!xyzzy!throopw