osd7@homxa.UUCP (Orlando Sotomayor-Diaz) (03/12/85)
From: Orlando Sotomayor-Diaz (The Moderator) <cbosgd!std-c>
mod.std.c Digest Mon, 11 Mar 85 Volume 4 : Issue 14
Today's Topics:
trigraphs (2 msgs)
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Date: 11 Mar 85 14:45:33 CST (Mon)
From: utzoo!henry
Subject: trigraphs
To: ihnp4!cbosgd!std-c
There seems to be a general misunderstanding to the effect that the
??char trigraph escapes exist to accommodate brain-damaged ancient
terminals. WRONG. This is English-speaking-North-American parochialism.
The international standard character set, established by ISO, is not
ASCII. ASCII is the English-speaking-North-American instantiation
(can't think of a better word) of the ISO set. What's the difference?
About ten of the character codes in the ISO set are simply marked
"reserved for national use". ASCII fills these in with useful things
like '{'. But many European countries need to use those codes for
other things, because they have more than 26 letters in their alphabets!
These people have terrible trouble with Unix and C as they now stand.
In other words, the characters which are available via the trigraph
escapes DO NOT EXIST in the international standard character set.
It makes a certain amount of sense to make it possible to write C code
without using nation-specific characters. It's unfortunate that there
is no 100%-backward-compatible way. My personal view is that the
occurrence of trigraph escapes in the same file as non-ISO characters
(i.e., stuff written both ways) should be cause for an error message.
This would at least simplify conversion. The idea of making trigraphs
available only via a compiler option also deserves consideration.
Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
{allegra,ihnp4,linus,decvax}!utzoo!henry
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Date: Mon, 11 Mar 85 07:36:53 PST
From: tektronix!seifert@mako
Subject: trigraphs
To: tektronix!ihnp4!cbosgd!std-c
>From: Eugene D. Brooks III <ucbvax!brooks@lll-crg.ARPA>
>Subject: trigraphs
>
> Terminals that don't support full ascii are rapidly going to the
> junk heap.
What about all those home computers that people are using to dial
into the big computer at work/school/whatever with?
> If this is eventually added to
>the ANSI standard it seems that it ought to be added as a compiler OPTION
>so that its people with ascii terminals, by far the majority, don't have
>to deal with this nonsense.
Here I agree 1000% Let's not handicap the majority to make life a
little easier for those trying to hack C on some brain-damaged pc.
In fact, it doesn't seem to me like we need to change C at all.
Why can't those with the brain-damaged terminals run their source
through a sed-script to put in the braces or whatever? Simple enough.
Dave Seifert
tektronix!mako!seifert
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End of mod.std.c Digest - Mon, 11 Mar 85 21:35:03 EST
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