Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!cmcl2!brl-adm!brl-smoke!gwyn
From: gwyn@brl-smoke.ARPA (Doug Gwyn )
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c,comp.std.c
Subject: Re: Why does C standard consider each compiler flag a separate implementation?
Message-ID: <8081@brl-smoke.ARPA>
Date: 13 Jun 88 05:34:18 GMT
References: <2746@ttrdc.UUCP>
Reply-To: gwyn@brl.arpa (Doug Gwyn (VLD/VMB) )
Organization: Ballistic Research Lab (BRL), APG, MD.
Lines: 12
Xref: utzoo comp.lang.c:10664 comp.std.c:47

In article <2746@ttrdc.UUCP> levy@ttrdc.UUCP (Daniel R. Levy) writes:
>WHY does the proposed standard say this?

What would you prefer that it say?
I bet you can't word your notion in a form acceptable for use in a standard.

The basic problem is that the Standard would have to discuss non-conforming
implementations in order to specify which variations in invocation would be
conforming, but by its nature the Standard cannot impose requirements on
non-conforming implementations.

Another problem is that there is no universal way of invoking compilers.