You've made the common mistake of thinking that this group might be a
place where real-life C developers can discuss real-world C.
<OT post, ignore if you must>
I think i understand where you're coming from, however this is c.l.c
after all, what do you expect other than ISO C?
Do you want to discuss POSIX/UNIX programming? Try
<Or perhaps windows programming <windows.programmer.win32> or some similar newsgroup.
You also seem to believe ISO C (or this newsgroup) is not about
realistic C, however I disagree and I will raise some valid points to
justify my argument.
Most -- if not all algorithms and data structures should be
implemented in standard C.
Isolating the implementation like that and watching for any and every
undefined behavior ensures our implementation will not have bugs.
We are not doing this to have our program run on a deathstar9000; we
do this to be *sure* our program will not do something it was not
intended for.
However, as you might notice, algorithms alone cannot do much; We
would have to use some system specific facilities to have our program
actually "do" something.
By doing so, our guarantee for portability is lost, we however could
aim the most popular systems such as mac,win,unix.
Your program is considered very 'portable' if it's a music player for
these systems. (example)
Since we have our algorithms implemented and guaranteed not to break
(unless the system specific standard breaks ISO C -- which sometimes
happends) we can concentrate on the system specific part of our
program.
With proper abstraction, adding more systems to our list of working
systems should be eas(y/ier).
That's why clc exists and is so 'pedant' or 'academic'; that's why
comp.unix.programmer exists, ditto for algorithm/other systems
newsgroups, and that's why OT posters are directed to the appropriate
group. (okay -- and sometimes flamed a bit
I see you've already started getting "Welcome to clc - now go away and
rot" messages from the "regulars". That's completely par for the course
- nothing to do with you.
Sometimes a rude post or two might be posted on usenet;
Words are just words and it's up to us to interpret them as we want.
