Re: K&R C (was Re: Bugs in enhanced mode)

[Daniel J S. <dan...@ie...>]

Allin Cottrell wrote:

>On Tue, 1 Jun 2004, Daniel J Sebald wrote:
>
>  
>
>>Would this be a tolerable hack?  Define a special type in some header
>>for char's as function arguments
>>
>>/* Throwback to K&R */
>>#ifdef __STDC__
>>#define ACHAR char
>>#else
>>#define ACHAR int
>>#endif
>>    
>>
>
>I strongly support the suggestion put forward by Hans-Berhard a few
>days ago, namely that support for 'K&R' should be dropped.  I'm not
>aware of any other serious software package that insists on supporting
>pre-1989 C compilers.  The effect is simply to complicate and
>obfuscate the gnuplot code.
>

That's true.  But I'm guessing one of the philosophies of Gnuplot is to 
accommodate as wide an audience as reasonably possible and to not 
continually squeeze out groups of users.  (If Gnuplot were trying to 
make a profit, different philosophy...)  I'll leave it up to those more 
familiar with software to decide if there is that wide of a K&R group 
left.  But, if there is support for a VAX, I would assume that 
supporting K&R C isn't that unreasonable.

Seriously, I've no strong opinion.  In fact, K&R have web pages.  Could 
drop them a short note and get their opinion.

>I'm aware that I don't have much standing in this debate because I
>have not contributed much to gnuplot.  On the other hand, I'd be more
>inclined to contribute were it not for the weird archaisms in the
>gnuplot code base.
>
>How many people are there in the world who refuse to use an ISO/ANSI C
>compiler, but who want to be able to compile the latest and greatest
>gnuplot?
>

Well, apparently Petr tried, hence the note in the source code.

Dan