A tale of two C's.

[Jerry Schwarz]

In article <152 at ghostwheel.UUCP> ned at ghostwheel.aca.mcc.com.UUCP (Ned Nowotny) writes:
>
>Now, however, X3J11, in the interest of runaway optimization, has exploded
>the name space of the language by reserving a whole host of function, macro,
>and data names.  While it is true that almost everyone wants standard libraries
>with their C compilers which match the libraries developed over the years on
>systems running the various flavors of Unix, I can't believe a majority of C
>programmers want these library definitions rolled into the language.
>

What the dpANSI standard does is limit implementors in the names they
can remove from the user name space.  This is not an explosion of the
name space, but a control of it.  In the past many implementations
would give core dumps when the user wrote

	void write(n) int n ; { printf("%d\n",n) ; }

because "printf" called "write".  This will no longer be allowed.

Jerry Schwarz
Bell Labs, Murray Hill