Modula2's godawful IO.

[Henry Spencer]

> >Now include the size of the floating point libraries.  On Microsoft 5.0 C,
> >calling printf links the floating point emulator, which is about 30K of code.
> >...Not all the world is a vax, you know.
> 
> It is not difficult[*] to arrange for the linker to pull in a simple
> printf() if the rest of the program does not use floating point, and a
> full-blown floating point printf if it does...

In fact, if your C implementation has a limited address space and a bulky
floating-point library and does NOT do this, complain to the implementors.
It's not a novel or strange idea.  The very first C implementation, on the
pdp11, used this trick.  If Microslop can't be bothered, don't buy their
compiler.
-- 
"Noalias must go.  This is           |  Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
non-negotiable."  --DMR              | {ihnp4,decvax,uunet!mnetor}!utzoo!henry