How valid is a "draft"?

[Alberto =?iso-8859-1?Q?Gim=E9nez?=]

Hello! I found on the web (www.open-std.org) what I think are C standard
drafts for C99 and C89. I suppose it is legal to download since tere
is no message forbiding (sorry for my terrible english to download
or requesting payment.

WG14/N843 Committee Draft -- August 3, 1998
Committee Draft -- January 18, 1999 WG14/N869

Those are the file's headers, so I deduced they're drafts of C98 and C99


Are those 'drafts' as valid as the real standard? If they are, why must
we pay for a standard as valid as a "free" draft?

And the last question (more philosophic) ¿Shouldn't a standard be free?
I think a standard mission is that as much people as possible follow it,
right?

Regards

 

[Mike Wahler]

Hello! I found on the web (www.open-std.org) what I think are C standard
drafts for C99 and C89. I suppose it is legal to download since tere
is no message forbiding (sorry for my terrible english to download
or requesting payment.

WG14/N843 Committee Draft -- August 3, 1998
Committee Draft -- January 18, 1999 WG14/N869

Those are the file's headers, so I deduced they're drafts of C98 and C99


Are those 'drafts' as valid as the real standard?

They're fairly close, but they're not the official specifications,
as are the actual standards. They're typically sufficient for
most cases.

If they are, why must
we pay for a standard as valid as a "free" draft?

They're not as valid as the standards.

And the last question (more philosophic) ¿Shouldn't a standard be free?
I think a standard mission is that as much people as possible follow it,
right?

It costs money to develop and publish the standard (in addition
to the time the committee members donate). Who pays for the costs?

Anyway, is it really an issue to pay about $20 (the price for
the .PDF version) for something of this much value?

-Mike

 

[Martin Ambuhl]

Hello! I found on the web (www.open-std.org) what I think are C standard
drafts for C99 and C89. I suppose it is legal to download since tere
is no message forbiding (sorry for my terrible english to download
or requesting payment.

WG14/N843 Committee Draft -- August 3, 1998
Committee Draft -- January 18, 1999 WG14/N869

Those are the file's headers, so I deduced they're drafts of C98 and C99

The top-of-page for the real standard (C99, there is not C98) is

ISO/IEC ISO/IEC 9899:1999 (E)
Reference number
ISO/IEC 9899:1999(E)
ISO/IEC 1999
INTERNATIONAL
STANDARD
ISO/IEC
9899
Second edition
1999-12-01
Programming languages --- C
Langages de programmation --- C

Are those 'drafts' as valid as the real standard?

They are not.

If they are, why must
we pay for a standard as valid as a "free" draft?

They're not, so the second part of the question is ignorable.

And the last question (more philosophic) ¿Shouldn't a standard be free?

Who is it you think _should_ be paying for not just the effort but the
physical process of producing the standard? If you think it should be
free for the rest of us, I hope you are volunteering to bear the costs.
If you only want to not pay for it, why should others bear your part
of the costs?

 

[Derrick Coetzee]

Are those 'drafts' as valid as the real standard? If they are, why must
we pay for a standard as valid as a "free" draft?

No, they have no authority or force. On the other hand, they're pretty
similar to the real standard, so if you have no money, you can get a
good idea of the style and much of the content reading it, but don't
take anything in it for granted. If you're a real language buff, you own
the standard and read drafts to observe how they change over time.

If all you want is a cheap standard, you can get an electronic copy of
the C99 standard for about $20, and a copy of the C90 standard in the
book The Annotated ANSI C Standard (ISBN 0078819520, just don't read the
terrible annotations.) See also the FAQ, question 11.2:

http://www.eskimo.com/~scs/C-faq/q11.2.html

And the last question (more philosophic) ¿Shouldn't a standard be free?
I think a standard mission is that as much people as possible follow it,
right?

Generally speaking, people don't need the standard unless they're
writing a compiler for a language. Practitioners only need to know good
practice to write code successfully, and usually steer far clear of any
subtle language points. However, you could successfully argue that a
free standard contributes to compiler compliance, since people writing
free compilers often aren't willing to fork out the money for a complete
standard.

 

[Alberto =?iso-8859-1?Q?Gim=E9nez?=]

El Sat, 04 Sep 2004 21:43:52 -0400, Martin Ambuhl escribió:

The top-of-page for the real standard (C99, there is not C98) is

Sorry, i meant C89, but having a look at the file, I've noticed that is
like another version of C99 draft.

Well, thanks for your gentle responses, and since I'm still a student, I
think I definitively will look for the draft (but I've heard that at the
university you can get a copy for free, will confirm).

 

[CBFalconer]

.... snip ...

WG14/N843 Committee Draft -- August 3, 1998
Committee Draft -- January 18, 1999 WG14/N869

Those are the file's headers, so I deduced they're drafts of C98
and C99

Are those 'drafts' as valid as the real standard? If they are,
why must we pay for a standard as valid as a "free" draft?

And the last question (more philosophic) ¿Shouldn't a standard be
free? I think a standard mission is that as much people as possible
follow it, right?

N869 is the last draft before actual publishing. It is very close
to the final result, but has differences. For your purposes it
should do.

Unfortunately it takes time, money, and effort to produce and
promulgate the standard. The USD 18 it costs (for a download of a
..pdf file) is not excessive. Unfortunately the final is not
available as a pure text file, and thus I prefer to use N869 in
the text form. You can get the text version at:
<http://anubis.dkuug.dk/jtc1/sc22/wg14/www/docs/n869/>

C90 became available as 'The Annotated C Standard' as a book at a
fairly reasonable price. Unfortunately every second page (the
annotations) were worthless, as they were written by Schildt, and
couldn't be torn out because the other side held the actual
standard.

 

[Alberto =?iso-8859-1?Q?Gim=E9nez?=]

El Sun, 05 Sep 2004 02:53:50 GMT, CBFalconer escribió:

C90 became available as 'The Annotated C Standard' as a book at a
fairly reasonable price. Unfortunately every second page (the
annotations) were worthless, as they were written by Schildt, and
couldn't be torn out because the other side held the actual
standard.

And there is something like a C89 'draft' similar to the standard? I've
been googling but the least thing I've found is the "rationale", that I
don't think is very 'descriptive', it has very sections missing.

I'm interested in C89 because I think that I don't need (by now)
most of the C99 updates ('//' comments?, bool type? WTF!), and most of
the usual posters of clc like and use C89 (apart from compiler
compliance, discussed in another thread).

 

[Martin Ambuhl]

Alberto Giménez wrote:

And there is something like a C89 'draft' similar to the standard? I've
been googling but the least thing I've found is the "rationale", that I
don't think is very 'descriptive', it has very sections missing.

 

[Michael Wojcik]

C90 became available as 'The Annotated C Standard' as a book at a
fairly reasonable price. Unfortunately every second page (the
annotations) were worthless, as they were written by Schildt, and
couldn't be torn out because the other side held the actual
standard.

More unfortunate (since the solution is less convenient) is that
_The Annotated C Standard_ is missing a page of the standard, and
it's one that's frequently useful - the description of field widths
and flags for fprintf. (TACS duplicated the text from page 131 of
the standard as page 132.)

Still, TACS has almost the entire C90 standard, and since that
document is difficult to get these days, I think it's worth grabbing
TACS if you find a cheap copy somewhere and you don't already have a
copy of 9899:1990.

 

[Dan Pop]

Hello! I found on the web (www.open-std.org) what I think are C standard
drafts for C99 and C89. I suppose it is legal to download since tere
is no message forbiding (sorry for my terrible english to download
or requesting payment.

WG14/N843 Committee Draft -- August 3, 1998
Committee Draft -- January 18, 1999 WG14/N869

Those are the file's headers, so I deduced they're drafts of C98 and C99


Are those 'drafts' as valid as the real standard? If they are, why must
we pay for a standard as valid as a "free" draft?

Why do you think they're called "drafts" in the first place?

If you pick a draft that's reasonably late, preferably the last public
draft (N869 in the case of the C99 standard), you can use it instead of
the real thing if you want a more precise description of the language
than usually available in tutorial books. However, anyone implementing
the language, should use the actual standard and accept no substitute.

And the last question (more philosophic) ¿Shouldn't a standard be free?
I think a standard mission is that as much people as possible follow it,
right?

This issue has been discussed at great length in comp.std.c. Check the
archives.

Dan

 

[Keith Thompson]

More unfortunate (since the solution is less convenient) is that
_The Annotated C Standard_ is missing a page of the standard, and
it's one that's frequently useful - the description of field widths
and flags for fprintf. (TACS duplicated the text from page 131 of
the standard as page 132.)

The missing page is printed in P.J. Plauger's book _The Standard C
Library_ (which is worth owning anyway). If you own both books, I
presume that photocopying the page in question and inserting it into
your copy of TACS is fair use, but IANAL.

Still, TACS has almost the entire C90 standard, and since that
document is difficult to get these days, I think it's worth grabbing
TACS if you find a cheap copy somewhere and you don't already have a
copy of 9899:1990.

TACS may be difficult to find as well; it's out of print (and you
can't have my copy).

And just because it can't be said too often, *ignore the annotations*.
See Clive Feather's excellent review at
<http://www.lysator.liu.se/c/schildt.html>.

 

[Dave Vandervies]

[On Schildt's _The Annotated C Standard_]

And just because it can't be said too often, *ignore the annotations*.

I seem to recall hearing, though I can't dig up a reference, that the
difference in price between the book and the standard itself reflected
the value of the annotations.

(For if it's not obvious, the book was priced rather lower than the
standard.)


dave

 

[Dan Pop]

[On Schildt's _The Annotated C Standard_]

And just because it can't be said too often, *ignore the annotations*.

I seem to recall hearing, though I can't dig up a reference, that the
difference in price between the book and the standard itself reflected
the value of the annotations.

Q11.2 of the c.l.c FAQ:

....
The mistitled _Annotated ANSI C Standard_, with annotations by
Herbert Schildt, contains most of the text of ISO 9899; it is
published by Osborne/McGraw-Hill, ISBN 0-07-881952-0, and sells
in the U.S. for approximately $40. It has been suggested that
the price differential between this work and the official
standard reflects the value of the annotations: ...

Dan