[TUHS] : C dialects (was: I can't drive 55: "GOTO considered harmful" 55th anniversary)

[Steve Nickolas]

On Mon, 13 Mar 2023, Clem Cole wrote:

> Frankly, I'd probably rather see ISO drop a bunch of the stuff they are now
> requiring and fall back at least to K&R2 -- keep it simple. The truth is
> that we still use the language today is that K&R2 C was then (and still is)
> good enough and got (gets) the job done extremely well.    Overall, I'm not
> sure all the new "features" have added all that much.

C99 did introduce one thing I use: <stdint.h>

Beyond that, I still code strict C89.  I simply treat the language itself 
as ossified.  I also still make assumptions about the compiler that might 
not still be true, so for example

  unsigned short a;
  unsigned char b;

  b=0xFF;
  a=b<<8;

I expect to return 0 even though the logical answer is 0xFF00, and I 
_always_ code it like this:

  b=0xFF;
  a=b;
  a<<=8;

or alternatively

  b=0xFF;
  a=((unsigned short) b)<<8;

and there's other defensive stuff I do.  I honestly don't see the point in 
the other changes to the language and feel they take C away from what it 
has always been.

-uso.