gnu@hoptoad.uucp (John Gilmore) (12/23/87)
I too am amazed and bugged by the committee engaging in language design
at this late date. And calling "well, no C compiler ever did this, but
other people have done this kind of optimization" PRIOR ART is a real
good one.
I would like a survey of people who think that the new rules on parentheses
WILL cause them to have to change their compiler. Doug claimed that
"only people who rearrange expressions will have to change". I think
that's just about everybody except maybe Small-C.
Is it still possible to get on the ballotting committee for the final standard?
--
{pyramid,ptsfa,amdahl,sun,ihnp4}!hoptoad!gnu gnu@toad.com
I forsee a day when there are two kinds of C compilers: standard ones and
useful ones ... just like Pascal and Fortran. Are we making progress yet?
-- ASC:GUTHERY%slb-test.csnetgwyn@brl-smoke.ARPA (Doug Gwyn ) (01/06/88)
In article <3722@hoptoad.uucp> gnu@hoptoad.uucp (John Gilmore) writes: >Doug claimed that "only people who rearrange expressions will have to change". I don't think that's quite what I said, but if so it's not what I intended. Compilers with target architectures that are 2's complement and that do not have run-time integer overflow trapping most likely are not affected by the parentheses rule change. This covers all of the systems I regularly use, which include many different architectures. If I'm mistaken about this, I'm sure someone will correct me! >Is it still possible to get on the ballotting committee for the final standard? The public gets to "ballot" in a sense by submitting comments in the next public review, which should start in a few weeks. However, actual voting is done by the X3J11 technical committee and subsequently by X3 (I think). To be a voting member of X3J11, you have to be a member who has attended 2 of the 3 meetings immediately preceding the vote (including the current meeting). Meetings have been held about every 3 months (the next is in April 1988, a longer gap than usual). Unless the second public review results in substantive changes, it is unlikely that joining now would allow you to vote on the final standard submitted to X3, since the intent is to address all public response issues at the April meeting. There is a chance that X3J11 will not get this task done in time and will have to finish in a later meeting, but I wouldn't count on it happening one way or the other. I suspect if you really are interested in investing the $$, time, and effort required to be an active X3J11 member that you can obtain membership information from the X3 Secretariat: CBEMA at (202)737-8888. However, your formal public review comments WILL be considered, so if you can muster sufficiently convincing arguments for changes to the proposed standard you can still get it changed.