mwm@eris.berkeley.edu (Mike (I'll think of something yet) Meyer) (07/28/89)
Sorry to drag this up, but something of interest just showed up in comp.std.c (well, many days ago, but...). It's an extract of the X3J11 report on extions not included in the standard. The key paragaphs were: The Committee has received numerous suggestions for enhancements, additions, and ``inventions''. In responding to such suggestions, we have been mindful of our obligation to standardize existing practice, rather than creating a new language. Many of these inventive suggestions appear to have real technical value, and it might be appropriate for implementors to experiment with them as locally-provided extensions. .P One of the valuable properties of C is that it is a ``small'' language. When one says that ``C is not Ada'', or that ``C is not PL/I'', the comparison of \fI\&size\fP is a major factor. In many cases, an advocate of one single suggestion might justifiably say that adding ``just this one feature'' would add only marginally to the size of the C language. The problem before the Committee was that a succession of such additions would eventually make C a much larger language than was desired. .P These judgements and tradeoffs might be more clearly appreciated by considering a selected list of inventive suggestions which were, in the end, rejected for inclusion in the C Standard. The Committee thanks the authors of the following items, and hopes they understand the difficulty of the tradeoffs involved in these choices. There were over 6 pages of suggestions, one line per suggestion, double spaced. None of them would have been hard (nested functions was among the harder to implement), most exist in other languages, and are usefull there. If anyone wants the rest of what I have, send email asking for the extract from the ANSI C committee. <mike -- He was your reason for living Mike Meyer So you once said mwm@berkeley.edu Now your reason for living ucbvax!mwm Has left you half dead mwm@ucbjade.BITNET