Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!ames!hc!lanl!jlg From: jlg@lanl.gov (Jim Giles) Newsgroups: comp.lang.fortran Subject: Re: `intrinsic' functions in forthcoming C standard Message-ID: <4030@lanl.gov> Date: 22 Sep 88 18:35:13 GMT References: <13681@mimsy.UUCP> Organization: Los Alamos National Laboratory Lines: 24 From article <13681@mimsy.UUCP>, by chris@mimsy.UUCP (Chris Torek): > Essentially, what the dpANS says is that if you, the programmer, write > your own version of the `library' functions, you have not written a > strictly conforming program, and a compiler that produces absolute > values even though your `fabs' produces `fabulously signed' numbers is > still correct. [...] This is _exactly_ what I meant when I said that the new standard was declaring some functions to be intrinsics. The are making a list of functions which the user cannot redefine in a portably reliable way. The compiler (or some other tool on the p[ath) is allowed to treat these functions in a different way - and users who try the redefine these are doing something non-standard. This is also exactly what I said was _desireable_ for the committee to do. It spells out explicitly which functions cannot be redefined so that the user can write portable code (by avoiding those names). The old de-facto C standard was not as portable because of this omission. Why is it when I say something, every jumps down my throat. When someone else says the _same_ thing it's greeted as a 'true revelation'. J. Giles Los Alamos