Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uwm.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!crdgw1!crdos1!davidsen
From: davidsen@crdos1.crd.ge.COM (Wm E Davidsen Jr)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: Weird problem with C compiler under SCO - I can't believe it!
Message-ID: <599@crdos1.crd.ge.COM>
Date: 28 Sep 89 15:26:14 GMT
References: <71@promark.UUCP> <14561@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU> <940@bbx.UUCP> <1989Sep27.170304.2158@utzoo.uucp>
Reply-To: davidsen@crdos1.UUCP (bill davidsen)
Organization: GE Corp R&D Center
Lines: 38

In article <1989Sep27.170304.2158@utzoo.uucp>, henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer) writes:
|  In article <534@crdos1.crd.ge.COM> davidsen@crdos1.UUCP (bill davidsen) writes:
|  >Another thing which was left out of the ANSI standard is some name space
|  >reserved to the user. That is, some subset of names which they promise
|  >not to snatch away in the next standard...
|
|	[ discussion of names which are reserved ]
|  
|  The classes of reserved identifiers are admittedly annoyingly large, but
|  the promise to reserve nothing else is of considerable importance.

  But they *didn't* promise not to, they said they haven't yet. The
feature I mentioned as missing was a statement that not future reserved
words will be of the form {choose one}.
|  
|  If by "the next standard" you mean a revised C standard, either the
|  revision will be upward-compatible or not.  If so, it has to preserve
|  these promises.  If not, then asking today's standard to make promises
|  on its behalf is silly.

  There are no promises for the future, only the present standard. It
would have been simple to define a namespace is intended to be used only
by applications. My example in another posting was starting with three
alpha chars and an underscore. Thus, if I want to be sure I don't have
to edit my source, I can use those names exclusively.

  I assume that future committees will be composed of thoughtful people.
I was on X3J11 for two years until my group ran out of T&L money. Now
I'm in another group and I hope that I'll be able to join the next
committee. If this future committee had any hint as to what names
applications use, they would pick others. What I suggest is that this
committee could have passed a hint on to the programmers and any future
committees about what space could be left to the application.
-- 
bill davidsen	(davidsen@crdos1.crd.GE.COM -or- uunet!crdgw1!crdos1!davidsen)
"The world is filled with fools. They blindly follow their so-called
'reason' in the face of the church and common sense. Any fool can see
that the world is flat!" - anon