Fuel for your flames: Things I would like in CPP

[Henry Spencer]

These suggestions are interesting, but I suspect that the response to
some of them should be "if the ANSI C committee tries to solve all the
world's problems, the ETA of the standard is roughly 2357 AD".  The
realities of building standards dictate that one sometimes just has to
say "there is no standard-conforming way to do X", because the list of
possible Xs is nearly infinite.  Deciding to build something with
approximately the same power as the current C language may be a cowardly
decision, but bravery is not necessarily a virtue in a standards effort.

It is also worth noting that (please correct me if I'm wrong on this,
Kevin) there is no operational experience with any of these things.
Standard committees have to decide, quite early on, whether they are
going to try and invent new solutions, or try to stick very closely
to things that are well-understood and proven in action.  The latter
approach is generally safer, and seems to be the prevailing mood of
the ANSI C folks.

> And with a well-written CPP, none of these changes are terribly difficult
> to implement.

You're sure?  Including the CPP's that are integrated into the scanners
of compilers?  I'm not saying you're wrong, just saying that this strikes
me as a very bold statement indeed.  There is more than one (good) way to
implement a CPP, and some of them may not lend themselves to such changes.
-- 
				Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
				{allegra,ihnp4,linus,decvax}!utzoo!henry