How ANSI is TC++?

Henry Spencer henry at zoo.toronto.edu
Fri Nov 2 03:27:32 AEST 1990


In article <131 at nazgul.UUCP> bright at nazgul.UUCP (Walter Bright) writes:
>A lot of people talk about "100% ANSI C compliance". This is impossible,
>as it implies there are *no* bugs in the compiler. We all know this
>is unattainable (by any known technology!). The best one can say is
>it passes so-and-so's test suite, or was validated by such-and-such...

Oh come now, Walter.  The best we can say is that it passed so-and-so's
test suite, assuming that the hardware wasn't malfunctioning that day
and that the operating system didn't swallow any of the error messages
and that the people running the test hadn't been bought off and etc etc.

All such statements necessarily carry an implicit "to the best of our
knowledge".  That being the case, it is meaningful and proper to speak
of "100% ANSI C compliance".
-- 
"I don't *want* to be normal!"         | Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
"Not to worry."                        |  henry at zoo.toronto.edu   utzoo!henry



More information about the Comp.lang.c mailing list