Reserved identifiers, was Re: Thoughts on moving towards ANSI

[Daniel Glasser]

Since I became indirectly involved in the ANSI C debate (several years ago)
I've objected to the combination of the language standard with the library
standard into one document.

The ANSI document allows two different types of implementations to call
themselves "standard" -- hosted and non-hosted.

A hosted implementation requires all of the library routines as they appear
in the standard, a non-hosted implementation does not.  In both cases, the
syntax and semantics of the language itself are identical.

I'm not saying that there should not be a standard for the library, just
that it should be its own standard.

There are some environments where the full-blown standard library is
inappropriate or impossible.  Also, compiler writers are not always the
best library writers.  With the advent of common object file format
standards, libraries may be purchased from vendors other than the
compiler vendor, but if that library does not conform to the ANSI
standard, the compiler is called non-conformant.

I'm babbling, but I think the above expresses my views.

-- 
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Daniel A. Glasser -- One of those things that goes "BUMP! (ouch)" in the night.
glasser at madnix or ...!uwvax.wisc.edu!per2!dag or ...!uwvax.wisc.edu!persoft!dag