Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!henry From: henry@utzoo.UUCP (Henry Spencer) Newsgroups: net.lang.c Subject: Re: C standard - levels? Message-ID: <4837@utzoo.UUCP> Date: Fri, 28-Dec-84 18:01:40 EST Article-I.D.: utzoo.4837 Posted: Fri Dec 28 18:01:40 1984 Date-Received: Fri, 28-Dec-84 18:01:40 EST References: <6748@brl-tgr.ARPA> Organization: U of Toronto Zoology Lines: 17 > Has the standard committee considered making a multi-level standard, > like COBOL? The committee discussed this very early, and rejected it. As Bill Plauger pointed out, the existence of roughly a dozen optional modules in COBOL means that there are about 4096 different "standard" COBOLs. This seems a poor example to emulate. Even Fortran (77) is only two languages. I'm not sure whether they rejected multiple versions completely, or decided to try for a single version and add a "subset" version if it was really necessary. In any event, they obviously didn't see any sufficiently-dire need. Personally, I agree with them. The farthest one should go is to admit a lesser version which is officially stigmatized by declaring it to be a "subset" version. And I don't see any major need for this in C. -- Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology {allegra,ihnp4,linus,decvax}!utzoo!henry