Question about #pragma removal

Bo Thorsen bo@sonofthor.dk
Fri Mar 15 01:43:00 GMT 2002


On Thursday 14 March 2002 17:52, Robert Dewar wrote:
> <Basically, all this does is create further extensions to the C language
> that are non-ansi.  Seems like Microsoft does the same sort of thing all
> the time (take JAVA for example).
>
>
> I think people should look at the Microsoft Java extensions carefully
> before casually using this as an example of unwarranted extensions. In fact
> they made perfectly reasonable sense to me. There is nothing inherently bad
> about something being an extension. GNU C has lots of valuable non-standard
> extensions (nested functions being one of the most clear examples).

Perhaps you should follow your own advice first.

Microsoft changed the semantics of two lowlevel methods and changed the 
arguments to another. And their extensions were not just language extensions, 
they needed vm changes too.

They broke source code compatibility (granted, that would only trigger for 
0.1% or less of the code out there) and they broke binary compatibility.

I'd say that qualifies as stupidity beyond reason.

And I do not think there's anything in the MS extensions you couldn't do with 
inner classes.

Bo.

-- 

     Bo Thorsen                 |   Praestevejen 4
     Free software developer    |   5290 Marslev
     SuSE Labs                  |   Denmark



More information about the Gcc mailing list