Re: Brian Kernighan, maybe I'm not worthy, maybe I'm scum

On Dec 30, 10:25 pm, Richard Heathfield <r...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
spinoza1111 said:

On Dec 30, 4:14 pm, Richard Heathfield <r...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Malcolm McLean said:

The identity of char and byte, with hindsight, was a mistake.

I'm not convinced, Malcolm. What makes you think it's a mistake?

3000 Chinese characters minimum needed to read the People's Daily, for
starters.

The C language places no upper limit on the size of a byte. Your reply is
predicated on the false assumption that bytes are required to be precisely
eight bits wide.

This isn't true in practice. The C language allows the programmer to
freely convert bytes to bit strings: the type isn't protected. This
means that it would be folly to use a C program blindly to work with
wide characters without a line by line audit.

Furthermore, even if you're able to change char to w_char, you'd need
a whole new set of functions, since functions have strong types and
real C programs make heavy use of library functions as a part of the
language.

We're not talking about a fantasy C, some clean, current and
conformant C. We're talking about the real world.

It is in my view unethical to promote C in this way, because it
appears that you want clients to adopt C and then retain you to make
the poor decision work in some way, by making real C conformant.

Java and to an extent .Net are in fact portable. C is only portable
amongst C-aware platforms.


--
Richard Heathfield <http://www.cpax.org.uk>
Email: -http://www. +rjh@
Google users: <http://www.cpax.org.uk/prg/writings/googly.php>
"Usenet is a strange place" - dmr 29 July 1999

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