Uninitialized externals and statics

[Doug Gwyn]

In article <1403 at atanasoff.cs.iastate.edu> hascall at atanasoff.cs.iastate.edu.UUCP (John Hascall) writes:
>   If you are not going to restrict the "local alphabet" *
>   characters to a contiguous sequence of integer values it certainly
>   makes the problem of writing a portable sorting routine difficult.

Sorting in dictionary order is obviously locale-dependent.  The C standard
specifies facilities to assist in this (see strcoll()).  Note that it did
not attempt to constrain the alphabet.

>   That's the point.  They should be an international data transport
>   standard not a C programming language standard.

There IS such a standard (ISO 646), but it doesn't include representations
for certain glyphs that are used in C source code!

>   What if some group decides on a "insert other langauge here"
>   standard that wants to use quadgraphs of $*$c, for example
>   for this file transfer purpose.

C appears to have the first programming language standard that made a
serious attempt to address internationalization concerns.  Others can
do what they will, but some of them may follow C's general approaches.