Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10 beta 3/9/83; site desint.UUCP Path: utzoo!linus!decvax!ittvax!dcdwest!sdcsvax!sdcrdcf!trwrb!scgvaxd!wlbr!desint!geoff From: geoff@desint.UUCP (Geoff Kuenning) Newsgroups: net.lang.c Subject: Re: Standardization questions (cpp mostly) Message-ID: <143@desint.UUCP> Date: Sat, 6-Oct-84 16:44:22 EDT Article-I.D.: desint.143 Posted: Sat Oct 6 16:44:22 1984 Date-Received: Tue, 9-Oct-84 20:00:13 EDT References: <83@decvax.UUCP> Organization: his home computer, Thousand Oaks, CA Lines: 34 From Martin Minow: >2. Six-character globals are a way of life on Dec's RSX/RT11/RSTS > operating systems and will stay that way for a while. If you > force a change, it will break the outside environment, which I > don't believe is in the committee's charter. Oh, that's great. The 11 folx haven't had time yet to fix the RAD50/6-char stuff left over from 65K address spaces, so all the rest of us have to suffer? Thanks! Tell you what, though, why stop there? After all, BASIC was originally defined to allow only TWO-character identifiers, and the second had to be numeric. So, for maximum interlanguage compatibility, we ought to restrict globals to the most restrictive common denominator, which appears to be BASIC. (Oops, I forgot TECO--register names are single characters. So we should restrict all globals to one alphabetic character! This would also simplify writing linkers, since they would only have to provide for a maximum of 26 globals). :-) > 8. I claim that nested comments /* ... /* ... */ warrant > a warning message -- that is a very common source of > error in the programs I see (and impossible to detect > without a warning message). YAY, YAY, YAY, YAY! I have probably lost a full eight hours in the last year due to my habit of typing /* ... *? ... /* ... */ (I'm a bit slow on the shift key at times) and then having to spot it by eye or even with a debugger. This is SO easy to detect, and it is far more often a true error than not. (Although people who comment out commented code by putting /* at the front of the line will get lots of warnings...but they were playing with fire in the first place). -- Geoff Kuenning First Systems Corporation ...!ihnp4!trwrb!desint!geoff