__STDC__ and non-conforming ANSI C compilers

[Casey Leedom]

| From: Ellis Oliver Jones <oj at apollo.com>
| 
| > From: Casey Leedom <casey at lll-crg.llnl.gov>
| > 
| > [[It should be noted that Apollo doesn't see any problem with the
| > described situation.  They don't feel that they are misusing the
| > __STDC__ symbol.]]
| 
| Mr. Leedom, this is a false statement.  Furthermore, you know it
| is a false statement.  You acknowledged mail from me informing you
| that I logged it as a compiler bug.  We are struggling to fix this 
| problem as quickly as possible.
| 
| I wonder who's really muddying the water.

  Actually you're right I think.  I got so much mail from people within
Apollo who didn't feel that it was a problem, I forgot yours.  I'll post
a retraction right away.  Please accept my apologies for this
misrepresentation.

  By the way, the quick fix is to leave __STDC__ undefined and provide a
compiler switch to allow users to use function prototyping (or accept
both syntaxes transparently, but I think that's a difficult problem).
The problem is not that your new compiler only provides function
prototyping.  The problem is that it claims to be an ANSI C compiler.

  Alternatively, you could drop the SYSV COFF object file format and use
GNU cc (or hope that someone gets GNU cc to handle COFF).  Then you'd get
an ANSI C compiler and a better compiler to boot.

Casey