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From: henry@utzoo.UUCP (Henry Spencer)
Newsgroups: net.lang.c
Subject: Re: ANSI proposal for preprocessor strings
Message-ID: <5152@utzoo.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 3-Mar-85 00:54:48 EST
Article-I.D.: utzoo.5152
Posted: Sun Mar  3 00:54:48 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 3-Mar-85 00:54:48 EST
References: <8436@brl-tgr.ARPA>, <454@ucsfcgl.UUCP>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
Lines: 15

I fear your argument [suggesting that the undocumented features of the
Reiser cpp should be standardized, because not doing so will break
working code] is weak.  If the register-assignment policy in the VAX
C compiler ever changes seriously, a great deal of Berkeley code will
break because of in-line assembler [retch].  Are you seriously suggesting
that changes to the VAX compiler which affect register assignment should
therefore be forbidden, and that every VAX C compiler from now until
eternity should be required to do it the same (undocumented) way?  Or
worse, that every C compiler in the world should be required to interpret
in-line VAX assembler the same way the VAX does, giving the same output?

The fix for brain-damaged implementation-dependent code is to fix the code.
-- 
				Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
				{allegra,ihnp4,linus,decvax}!utzoo!henry