C Builtin Funxions

[George Robbins]

In article <498 at brl-smoke.ARPA> gwyn at BRL.ARPA (VLD/VMB) writes:
>X3J11 was not proposing to permit built-in functions in a
>stand-alone conforming C implementation.  They would be
>permitted in a hosted implementation, however.

Are you sure that the X3J11 committee hasn't been infiltrated by
unsatiated ADA persons?  :-)

This business of including the runtime routines in the language
standard brings out an awful log of worried frowns on the faces
of knowledgeable c/unix people.  Look at the problems that the
Pascal and Modula2 people are having with their 'offical' runtime
routines/libraries...

To minimize this criticism, the committee seems to be making a
big distinction between hosted and non-hosted environments that
doesn't map well into the real world.  Most of the people trying
to develop compilers for non-unix microcomputer operating systems
are trying to be as unix-like as possible, but just can't make
all the way because of operating system brain damage.

I would be much happier if there were two separate documents, so
that a vendor could clearly say that his compiler is fully X3J11
conforming, and his runtime support conforms to XJXXX with the
following exceptions.

One of the better things to come out of the COBOL standards efforts
was the notion of specifying a minimum core language, then defining
optional modules that were pretty close to the way the big boys (IBM)
had actually implemented their extensions.  This makes it fairly
easy for a vendor to communicate to a user just what his compiler
supports.
-- 
George Robbins - now working with,	uucp: {ihnp4|seismo|caip}!cbmvax!grr
but no way officially representing	arpa: cbmvax!grr at seismo.css.GOV
Commodore, Engineering Department	fone: 215-431-9255 (only by moonlite)