On Mon, 29 Oct 2012 23:58:23 -0000 Charles Forsyth <charles.fors...@gmail.com> wrote: > > "But my point was that a programmer should understand the standard" > > But suppose the standard does not evidently aim to be understood, in the > generally understood meaning of "understood", > or there are more words in the standard than will ever appear in the > programmer's own programs?
The C standard is not too hard to understand. For something worse try one of those ITU standards! Try IEEE 802 standards! I have had to read the Bridging standard many many more times (compared to the C standard) to make sense of it. The standards *shouldn't* be so horrible but they are. And one does what is needed to get the job done. > Worse! "Standard" doesn't imply a fixed point ("oh, that syntax/semantics > is so last year!"). > I think looking into memset and deciding it's not worthwhile calling is > perhaps overly enthusiastic. I ask again. Who decides where the line is drawn? I think that in a competitive environment the only thing that can restrain people is the standard. Unfortunately. > Actually, it's wrong, because it overlooks the side-effect, and an > optimiser for a language with side-effects > should take that into account. They put in "volatile" to ensure side-effects happen. Hasn't worked too well.