Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!wuarchive!psuvax1!rutgers!njin!princeton!jonlab!jon From: jon@jonlab.UUCP (Jon H. LaBadie) Newsgroups: comp.lang.c Subject: Re: Why are @, `, and $ not used in C? Summary: There is an error message relating to ` Keywords: This is a historic question Message-ID: <808@jonlab.UUCP> Date: 2 Oct 89 04:18:44 GMT References: <509.nlhp3@oracle.nl> <19211@gatech.edu> <3068@ur-cc.UUCP> <408@illusion.UUCP> Organization: 4455 Province Line Rd., Princeton, NJ 08540 Lines: 22 Sorry if I am treading old territory here. My news feed was down for a considerable time and I have just picked up this thread. The compilers I have used, principally within the AT&T environment have a vestigal error message relating to the back quote (`). If one enters a character constant with the wrong quotes, eg. `a` instead of 'a', the compiler complains about: Illegal BCD constant I have tried numerous single and multi character combinations and none were "legal BCD constansts". I assume that BCD constants were considered as a possible addition to the language at one time and for whatever reason, rejected. Does anyone have any insight into the history of this error message? -- Jon LaBadie {att, princeton, bcr}!jonlab!jon {att, attmail, bcr}!auxnj!jon