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.
