Spec.?

["Gwang Sik Yoon" <yoon at macroimpact dot com>]

hi,

I found the following message from the archive about the official documentation of the C language the GCC supports.
I want to make it sure that things havn't changed yet. There is no such a document, isn't it?


Thanks in adv.,

Gwang Sik Yoon


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  a.. To: aitor dot sm at teleline dot es 
  b.. Subject: Re: Specs. 
  c.. From: "Martin v. Loewis" <martin at loewis dot home dot cs dot tu-berlin dot de> 
  d.. Date: Mon, 17 Apr 2000 00:59:51 +0200 
  e.. CC: gcc at gcc dot gnu dot org 
  f.. References: <38F9EDAC.3E44A14A@teleline.es> 

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

> Call me a web-clumsy, but I can't find in the documentation some text
> explaining *exactly* the grammar of the language, and not just what the
> compiler adds to standard C/C++.

GCC does not include language definitions for the languages it
supports. Instead, language definitions are provided by others.

> Even if some links to where to find this (which would be
> appreciated), wouldn't it be neccessary to have this?

So far, there was no need to have such documentation. There are
excellent books on C, C++, and Java, and there are international
standards on C, C++, and Chill (as well as Pascal and Ada). GCC is
supposed to implement those, so only the differences need to be
documented.

> so that you don't have to do a research study every time you want to
> use something in your source. E.g.  if I wan't to know which are the
> escape sequences supported by GCC (C compiler), what do I do? which
> of those are from standard, from gcc, from M$?

If you want to know the escape sequences you can use, you should read
a C book - you can use all of those explained there. Of course, there
is a slight chance that that you could use other escape sequences as
well. If you want to know for sure, you'd need to look into the source
code of the compiler. Most people don't want to use GCC extensions
though, except for specific problems were the C standard is really
missing important functions (escape sequences are not such an area).

So again, my feeling is that providing an extensive manual on the "GNU
C Language" (and the "GNU C++ Language") is a bad thing. I know other
compiler vendors do that, so that people often can't tell what is
portable and what is not. However, if somebody would contribute such
documentation to GCC, I would not object to its inclusion - at least
not if there is a chance that such documentation is maintained over
the next couple of years, or so.

Regards,
Martin

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