namespace issues with old C headers

[Benjamin Kosnik]

>It turns out that, for my example program that only includes <iostream>
>and winds up with an assert() definition, the problem is already fixed
>in 3.3 and the trunk!  This one has plagued me forever (I use gcc for
>development and find that by programs often don't compile with Sun's
>or HP's compilers), so I'm quite happy. 

Well that's good news. 

In the future, if you run into stuff like this you should tell us so
that people know things are broken. This is the first I've heard of it.

Getting the includes right is really tricky. If people can come up with
a better solution, well, I'm interested (especially if it's a real patch
that passes make check.) Please don't be discouraged to try something
new: there is substantial room for improvement on many issues.

best, 
benjamin