std-unix@longway.TIC.COM (Moderator, John S. Quarterman) (08/23/89)
An Update on UNIX* and C Standards Activities August 1989 Jeffrey S. Haemer, Report Editor USENIX Standards Watchdog Committee ANSI X3J11 C Language Update Doug Gwyn (gwyn@brl.mil) reports: There's not much new on the X3J11 (ANSI C) front. As of about a week ago [i.e, mid-May, 1989 - jsh], X3 had not yet finished the reballoting caused by having to respond to a previously lost, public comment letter from Russell Hansberry. X3J11 discussed these comments with Hansberry at the Seattle meeting, voted on some resulting proposals, and, in summary, reaffirmed previous resolutions of and decisions about all his issues. In all, no changes were made to the December 1988 draft proposed standard and rationale documents. An official response was sent to Hansberry, who had 15 working days to respond to X3, after which X3 would again ballot on whether or not to send the proposed C standard to ANSI for ratification. Hansberry replied, requesting a full formal review process. Since this was previously approved, we expect the same outcome for the reballot, but the people involved in the appeals process are not the same as the ones with technical expertise who drew up the standard, so anything could happen. Certainly there will, at least, be a substantial delay in obtaining final approval of the submitted standard as an ANSI standard. ISO WG14 met concurrently in Seattle. A Danish proposal for an alternative to trigraphs was defeated by both X3J11 and WG14; although one might hope that we've heard the last about this, the delay on the ANSI side might permit more hassle from the Danes. WG14 also agreed to submit the same proposed standard as ANSI's for ISO approval, with the understanding that British concerns about excessive instances of "undefined" behavior would be addressed early in the X3J11 "interpretations" phase. Specifically, the British would like all such instances clearly identified. X3J11 is working with them to prepare an "information bulletin", which would clarify the standard without forcing a revision of the proposed standard itself. X3J11 work for the foreseeable future will concentrate on answering __________ * UNIX is a registered trademark of AT&T in the U.S. and other countries. Jeffrey S. Haemer, Editor USENIX Standards Watchdog Committee August 1989 Standards Update - 2 - ANSI X3J11 C Language questions about the standard and providing rulings on interpretations. No new instances of X3.159/1003.1 conflict have arisen, to my knowledge, since the "great `environ' problem". There have been several varying interpretations of how vendors should define __STDC__ (if at all) in an "extended" implementation of X3.159, such as most POSIX vendors will be doing for reasons of backward compatibility. X3J11 certainly intended all positive integral values of __STDC__ to be reserved for strictly standard- conforming implementations of C; there is some disagreement whether non-positive values should be used by vendors to indicate "ANSI C except with extensions". Unfortunately there is no way to constrain non-conforming implementations via wording in the standard. A proposal that X3J11 undertake standardization of C++ was rejected; although there was a consensus that C++ was ready for a standards effort to begin, it was not felt that C++ should be undertaken by X3J11 itself, for a variety of reasons. Rex Jaeschke has formed a "Numerical C Extension Group", which has begun work on identifying extensions needed for C to fully serve the numerical computing community. This is not yet officially under X3 auspices, but it could become so. The X3J11 meeting slated for September, 1989 in Salt Lake City was canceled due to the approval delay; the next scheduled meeting is in New York City on March 5-6, 1990. Jeffrey S. Haemer, Editor USENIX Standards Watchdog Committee