On 06-Jan-02, 04:55 (CST), Adrian Bunk <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > You need to do this in a portable way so that it works on every system...
No, the people who want modern code to run on their systems need to figure out how to support the standard. Why should every piece of code contain the work-arounds to support broken systems, rather than expecting the systems to solve their own problems? > It's the choice of the author of a program whether he wants to support > older systems or not - Exactly. It's not required, and shouldn't even be expected. I'd much rather an author spent time adding features, or writing docs, or even relaxing with Quake than waste it supporting the 1993 version of Piece-o'-Crap OS. But that's my opinion, and if some one feels the need, then that's up to them. >I remember that e.g. many GNU programs still support > pre-ANSI C compilers. Which is really sad. It makes the code harder to read, and provides ample opportunity for subtle bugs when the standard code path is updated, and the non-standard one isn't. The only thing that really needs to support pre-ansi compilers is gcc (and possibly GNU make). Anyway, I suppose this is off-topic enough. The original point was that most people don't even know how to write standard conforming code, much less adjust for supporting systems that aren't. Steve