two compilers

[Henry Spencer]

In article <32905 at ism780c.isc.com> marv at ism780.UUCP (Marvin Rubenstein) writes:
>PS: I have heard that Unix release 5.4 uses two compilers.  One to compile
>Unix and one (ANSII) for new programs.  Does any one know if this is true?

Very probably it has one compiler invoked with two different sets of options,
perhaps by different names as well.  The major reason for this sort of thing
is that historical C compilers had a long, ill-documented, and usually
steadily growing list of names that the user was not allowed to use in his
program, while ANSI C has called a halt to this maddening practice.  So
one set of options gets you the old behavior to avoid having to fix all
the crufty old programs, while the other gets you civilized behavior that
occasionally requires a bit more care from the programmer.
-- 
V7 /bin/mail source: 554 lines.|     Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
1989 X.400 specs: 2200+ pages. | uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry at zoo.toronto.edu