[PATCH] C undefined behavior fix

dewar@gnat.com dewar@gnat.com
Fri Jan 4 19:42:00 GMT 2002


<<The C standard costs $18 from webstore.ansi.org.  But becuase it's not
"free enough" we can't mention it in the doc.  Anybody that's truly
interested in understanding the language they use has no reason not to
have access to the formal definition of it.
>>

It's really *too* bad that the standard is not freely available.

With the Ada standard, the only way we ended up with a freely available
standard was by playing hardball with ISO. We told them it's up to you,
if you want to sponsor this standard, it has to be free, and it's a deal
breaker, if you won't allow it to be free, we are packing our bags and
going home. There were soe tense weeks, but they finally agreed. I think
other language committees should be willing to do the same!

A consequence is that it is very unusual to find an Ada programmer who
does not have access to the standard, and uses it for reference purposes
at least. Furthermore, the irony is that since the standard is well known,
lot's of people *are* willing to put out money to buy copies, so in fact
even if the objective is to make $$$ it is better to make the document
freely available.



More information about the Gcc mailing list