🚀 go-pugleaf

steve@taumet.com (Stephen Clamage) writes:

>Second, how do you specify in a standard how this is going to work?  There
>has to be a central clearing house to assign or approve a string for each
>compiler.  Who supports such an organization?  Who runs it?  Who ensures
>its continued existence when the current operators get bored or die?  Who
>enforces compliance, and how?  There are both volunteer and government-
>run institutions which perform comparable services, but no language
>standard could possibly address these issues.

>Third, the standard could not enumerate all possible C compilers,
>since some would come into existence between approval and publication,
>let alone after publication.  So you would have to find out on a compiler-
>by-compiler basis what the special strings were and modify your program
>for each new compiler.  This is just what you have to do now with no
>intervention by the standard.

There is already a way to do this.  It is called domain names.  Most
makers of compilers already have one, and the rest can easily get one.
They simply prepend whatever product and version names they feel are
necessary and make their compiler define it.
-- 
 /***************************************************************************\
/ Phil Howard -- KA9WGN -- phil@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu   |  Guns don't aim guns at  \
\ Lietuva laisva -- Brivu Latviju -- Eesti vabaks  |  people; CRIMINALS do!!  /
 \***************************************************************************/