Re: [4.1] UCNs in identifiers

[Mike Stump <mrs at apple dot com>]

On Thursday, January 6, 2005, at 09:59  PM, Zack Weinberg wrote:
> You may not commit this patch, or any other patch along the same
> lines.  This feature MUST NOT be implemented until the associated bugs
> in the C and C++ standards are fixed.

I find this position somewhat drastic.  Our history is littered with 
bad language specs, incomplete language specs, contradictory language 
specs, missing language specs and beyond.  I don't find it at all bad 
to implement the middle core that is obvious, agreed upon and implied 
if not stated by the standard; failing that, what users want.

I don't find it a crime to change an ABI for a new feature that no one 
uses, and no one in their right might could portably use.

I guess I am just more pragmatic.  The compiler isn't an exercise in 
academic purity, nor necessarily the reflection of some perfection of a 
language spec, but rather, what a user wants.  Either, they tell us 
what they want, or we decide what they want.

I appreciate that you may not want to do the deciding, what's your 
right, but, also, I don't see that progress should be blocked, just 
because some silly language spec.  Rewrite the language specs if you 
want, and submit that to the committee if you want.

We can do up a proposed solution that resolves all the known issues, 
deliver that to users, get feedback on it, propose it as the standard.  
I'd rather the standard be based upon something that someone has 
thought through, implemented, resolved all the issues that users bring 
up and that users use...