Re: incompatible 'improvements'

[Robert Dewar <dewar at adacore dot com>]

George White wrote:

> Frankly, I don't care what standards say is no longer acceptable
> syntax. 

Well it is a goal of gcc to be compatible with the standard. Really
it should be a goal of yours to make sure your code is correct, i.e.
that it conforms with the standard, and if you write incorrect code,
you cannot expect it to be accepted by the compiler in the first
place. It is certainly not the case that you can assume that because
the compiler accepts your code, that it is correct.

> If I have something that works, I expect it to continue to
> work. 

THat's a wrong expectation. If you write incorrect code, you cannot
expect it to keep working.

If you have a requirement for old incorrect legacy code to keep
working, that's reasonable, but you are going to need to find
someone (and presumably pay them) to maintain the old incorrect
legacy compilers that go along with your old incorrect legacy code.

Sure, it would be good if the compiler never accepted the bad code
in the first place, but if a bug is found, it has to be fixed.

> What's next?  Are you going to start imposing your source code
> formatting standards?

Non sequitur, since this has nothing to do with language standards

> Stop emulating Microsoft, who has little regard
> for maintaining backwards computability

backwards compatibility is of course important, but fixing clear
bugs has higher priority ultimately if we expect gcc to achieve
its goal of full implementation of the relevant standards.

> and start emulating Sun who is generally very good at this.

Here I think you are primarily talking about the OS, where things
are a bit different since there is no external standard that has
to be followed.
> Regards,
>
> George White