How limited is a strictly conforming program?

Larry Jones scjones at sdrc.UUCP
Fri Mar 31 08:37:50 AEST 1989


In article <12208 at haddock.ima.isc.com>, karl at haddock.ima.isc.com (Karl Heuer) writes:
> S1.7 of the pANS says "A strictly conforming program ... shall not exceed any
> minimum implementation limit".  Does this include the limits in S2.2.4.1?  I
> would think so, but the text refers only to the minimum quality of the
> implementation.  Is a program still strictly conforming if it has more than
> 509 characters in a string literal?  (And does that figure include the
> trailing null character, or not?)
> 
> Karl W. Z. Heuer (ima!haddock!karl or karl at haddock.isc.com), The Walking Lint

Yes, that does include the limits in S2.2.4.1 so a program with
more that 509 characters in a string literal is not strictly
conforming (and that blows away my entry in the Portable Self
Replicating C Code Contest - I forgot about that limit).  As to
whether to count the null or not, it isn't clear, but I don't
think so.  In S3.1.4 it says that "In translation phase 7, a byte
or code of value zero is appended to each multibyte character
sequence that results from a string literal or literals." which
implies that it is no longer a string literal by the time the
null is added.

----
Larry Jones                         UUCP: uunet!sdrc!scjones
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