Re: Trigraph warnings when compiling linux-2.4.0-prerelease1

[Linus Torvalds <torvalds at transmeta dot com>]

On Tue, 2 Jan 2001, Joe Buck wrote:
> Per Bothner wrote:
> > > I read "assuming they are enabled" is a very poor way of saying "warn about
> > > constructs that would be read as trigraphs if trigraphs were enabled."
> 
> Linus wrote:
> > I would have to agree that that would be more logical, even if I don't
> > think that is what the docs actually _say_ right now ;)
> 
> Thanks for alerting us to this documentation bug.  I had also read the
> language the way Per reads it, and not the way you read it,

It did not use to be a documentation bug, and the way I read the
documentation is the _right_ way to read it.

It is 

 (a) what the meaning of the English was (as opposed to what you and Per
     apparently _expected_ it to be, and what I can agree is to some
     degree the "logical" warning message)

and

 (b) what the old cccp.c sources actually did. 

So my reading of the documentation was/is the right one: gcc did not use
to warn about trigraphs if trigraphs were not enabled. That's what the
documentation says, and that is what the code says. There is no "bug"
anywhere. It was obviously intentional, and probably because a lot of
people hated trigraphs with a passion. 

These days, trigraphs have been around so long that some people seem to
have forgotten just how despised they used to be, and just take the dang
things at face value. 

The fact is that apparently the new pre-processor behaves differently than
the old one, and differently from the documentation. Fine. If people
really want the new behaviour (I personally don't particularly, but I'm
not in a position to argue about _that_), just fix the documentation.

But let's also admit that this is new behaviour, instead of saying that
things were "buggy", ok? 

		Linus