Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!clyde!att!rutgers!ukma!uflorida!novavax!proxftl!twwells!bill From: bill@twwells.uucp (T. William Wells) Newsgroups: comp.std.c Subject: What's implementation defined? (was Re: are enums integers in ANSI?) Message-ID: <229@twwells.uucp> Date: 1 Dec 88 05:17:37 GMT References: <8457@alice.UUCP> <219@twwells.uucp> <1988Nov28.215053.3129@utzoo.uucp> Reply-To: bill@twwells.UUCP (T. William Wells) Organization: None, Ft. Lauderdale Lines: 28 In article <1988Nov28.215053.3129@utzoo.uucp> henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer) writes: : In article <219@twwells.uucp> bill@twwells.UUCP (T. William Wells) writes: : >But it does! The standard says that which one it is compatible with : >is "implementation defined". That implies that it has to be : >documented. : : Yes, but this is not entirely inconsistent with Dennis's suggestion. Oh, I agree; I was only quibbling about the "announce in advance" part. : No; what we have here is a situation in which the legality of such a : program is implementation-defined. It is not improper to fail to translate : an illegal program. "Implementation defined" is kind of wierd here. Implementation defined behavior applies to "a correct program construct...", yet we have the logical contradiction of "implementation defined" being used to determine what a correct program construct *is*. Since this kind of thing occurs throughout the standard, I'm forced to conclude that they intended that some things can be implementation defined to be incorrect, regardless of the stated definition of "implementation defined". --- Bill {uunet|novavax}!proxftl!twwells!bill