view growbuf read until() suggestion
Roland Illig
roland.illig at gmx.de
Sat Aug 6 18:28:40 UTC 2005
Pavel Tsekov wrote:
> Roland, you should know that the C standard is far less practical
> than an actual implementation. The intended audience of the standard
> is not application programmers but implementors.
I think the last sentence is wrong. Application programmers _should_ be
interested in the C standard, to know whether their programs are likely
to be portable. As the Midnight Commander is meant to be portable, we
should also be. It's a pity that most programmers don't care about the
definition of the language they use everyday, or that they don't even
know that such a definition exists.
> You are getting way too picky. Holding the standard in one hand and
> pointing a finger with the other doesn't seem very appropriate. The
> text that you quote is out of context too. In any case I am not going
> to get involved into interpreting what the C standard commitee had in
> mind.
I intended it to be enough context for you, Pavel, as I know that you
have access to a copy of the C standard. You even quoted from it a while
ago.
> Having said that I have to say that I like your patch because it is
> cleaner and avoids some code duplication present in my patch. Of
> course I haven't checked it against the bunch of possible standards
> that it might vioalte.
I think the Midnight Commander developers never had a discussion about
what system properties they require and which assumptions may be made by
the code. I would say we require an ISO C90 or ISO C99 implementation
that conforms to SUSv3. At least. After all, I think we should have such
a discussion.
Roland
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