🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <827765484snz@tsys.demon.co.uk>,
Tom Wheeley  <tomw@tsys.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>Surely you have just proved that the standard library is _not_ part of the
>C language.  At the risk of seeming -pedantic, I would say that the standard
>library is a part of the _standard C *implementation*_, but not a part of
>the standard C *language*.

Nope.  "This International Standard specifies and establishes the
interpretation of programs written in the C programming language."  What
it specifies is C.

>That is why you can build the standard library within C -- you cannot write
>the entire standard library using the standard library, therefore if the
>standard library is a part of the C language, then the standard library is
>no longer written in the C language, but only a limited subset thereof.

You cannot write the standard library in C; at least, not completely.  You
absolutely *must* have some way of reading or writing that is not a part
of the C language.  You also (if you wish to offer a respectable
implementation) need to find some way to get or release memory, and you
need a way to check on the time, and on CPU time used.  None of this
can be done in C-without-libraries, the language that C would be if
the standard library were not a part of it.

Implementors must write in a language which is also C, but is not the
standard form; they write in what is called a freestanding evironment,
one which may not have any or all of the library available, and which
may require or offer special magic.

Arguably, if you look at a "freestanding implementation", you have a
language which is still C, but has no standard library; on the other
hand, you can write no programs in it, because it does not specify
how you start a program.  (main() is only documented for hosted
environments, i.e., those with libraries.)

>I hope you understood that, I half expected to end up mentioning an index of
>everything that is not indexed... ;-)

Ahh, the World Wide Web.

(Actually, that's the index of indexes with no things in them.)

-s
-- 
Peter Seebach - seebs@solon.com - Copyright 1996 Peter Seebach.
C/Unix wizard -- C/Unix questions? Send mail for help.  No, really!
FUCK the communications decency act.  Goddamned government.  [literally.]
The *other* C FAQ - http://www.solon.com/~seebs/c/c-iaq.html