Re: backslash whitespace newline

[Andrew Pinski <pinskia at physics dot uc dot edu>]

> 
> On Tue, Oct 25, 2005 at 09:46:23PM -0700, Shantonu Sen wrote:
> > You're forgetting something: GNU/Linux distros are built with  
> > thousands of lines of patches to support new/different gcc behavior.  
> 
> Unfortunately, too many C++ programmers in particular never used
> a compiler other than g++, and older g++ versions accepted all kinds
> of amazing stuff that was not C++.  There was never any promise
> made that such things would continue to compile forever.
> 
> > Thousands were added for the 2->3 transition, and thousands more for  
> > 3->4. Please don't claim that all upstream programs in all  
> > distributions support gcc 3.4.4 and 4.0.2 without modification, and  
> > thus gcc is the standard by which portability is defined.
> 
> Who's talking about 3.4.4 or 4.0.2?

also If you look at Apple, there has already be a revert of a patch which
went into 4.0.1 which fixes a C++ regression but also introduces rejecting
invalid code which was not rejected before 4.0.1 (in 4.0.0).

Why did Apple revert that patch, well because there was push back from
internal developers who did not want to fix their code.  Why should
this case be any difference?  In fact this case is difference in a
way because both ways are accepted by the standards committee as
acceptable.  So you hurt one person who writes valid (but questionable)
C code and help another who writes valid (but still questionable) C code.
So from the looks of it, nobody can win.  So the easiest (and in this
case, best) way is not to change and hurt the current customers as they
are more likely to be repeat customers already and would move to another
compiler, or even worse fork GCC.

Now the code in question is even not that hard to fix which in a weird
way as Apple got push back from developers that they don't want to change
their code.  The easiest way to fix the problem in both ways is to use C
style comments around the C++ style comments.

The real question here is why should GCC do stuff like other compilers
in terms of implemenation defined behaviors?  In my mind, we should do
what we have done right now and should not change, just to conform to
what other people do?  In a way we are thinking different, isn't that
what Apple is about anyways?

If the standards committee says we are within the limits of the standard,
why change, especially when it comes to ASCII art.  This seems silly
even to ask GCC to change over that.


-- Pinski
(hopefully this is much better worded/agruement than before was, I was upset
that this was even being asked about, when the standards committee said was
it okay and that it was over ASCII art).