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Re: Suggestion of annex D
Guillaume Melquiond <guillaume.melquiond@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Le mardi 29 mai 2007 ` 00:08 +1000, Peter Henderson a icrit :
Disagreeing with the C standard, or any other standard for that matter
is the correct choice when they specify bad choices. The result will be
that users will have the choice of the more considered ieee 754 function
or an inferior version.
This kind of comment has appeared several times on this mailing-list
lately, and I feel the situation has to be put back into perspective.
On one side, we have a _normative_ annex in an _ISO_ standard, that has
been around for ten years, and that has a big influence on several
widely-used programming languages.
I am sorry, but that is completely wrong.
Firstly, while C99 has been around for nearly a decade, it is NOT
taking off - not even now. Here are some (slightly censored) notes
from the latest WG14 meeting (which I was not at):
X and Y raised a warning flag that vendors, and especially
Microsoft, have been slow to implement C99. ...
Z said the real problem is not so much that Microsoft doesn't
support C99, but that users are not demanding it.
We [ one of the 5 biggest software houses in the world ] are
still holding back to C89, because C99 is just not reliable
enough for us, although we were keen on the expanded compiler
limits. ...
To the best of my knowledge, there is ONE language system that
supports Annex F in full - Sun ONE Studio under Solaris. There may
be others, but every one I have been told does has turned out to
either support only bits of it, not support it in combination with
other essential features (e.g. system libraries, or optimisation
on hardware that relies on compiler optimisation) or has simply
misimplemented it hopelessly incorrectly.
It is also true that many influential users and application
developers are currently rejecting it. Just a few years ago, I
investigated HPC procurements, and over half specifically demanded
a C90 compiler (C99 is incompatible with C90, especially in this
area).
Secondly, WHICH programming languages have been heavily influenced
by C99, and most especially Annex F? I don't know of any.
Let's skip over WG14 politics, on the grounds of maintaining good
order, and merely point out that there was very strong opposition
to Annex F at all stages from its initial proposal to the Numerical
C Extensions Group to the acceptance of C99 as an ISO standard.
As experience with C99 has developed, there is strong evidence that
the people opposing it had good technical reasons to do so.
Regards,
Nick Maclaren,
University of Cambridge Computing Service,
New Museums Site, Pembroke Street, Cambridge CB2 3QH, England.
Email: nmm1@xxxxxxxxx
Tel.: +44 1223 334761 Fax: +44 1223 334679