On Fri, Sep 30, 2005 at 04:02:07PM -0700, George White wrote: > I would like to suggest that in the future you pay more attention > to backwards computability. There have been at least 4 instances > where you broke the compiler with regard to being able to compile > legacy code.
The C standard that gcc implements by default has not changed since 1990. The C++ standard was final in 1998. You've had 15 years (if you're a C programmer) or 7 years (if you're a C++ programmer) to get used to the standard. Apparently you've learned the language by typing stuff at the compiler and finding out what worked. > Frankly, I don't care what standards say is no longer acceptable > syntax. If I have something that works, I expect it to continue to > work. What's next? Are you going to start imposing your source code > formatting standards? Stop emulating Microsoft, who has little regard > for maintaining backwards computability and start emulating Sun who is > generally very good at this. Sun has been so good at backwards compatibility that they've been prevented from implementing the C++ language correctly, and for years this has created huge porting headaches, and examples from standard textbooks have until recently not worked with Sun compilers. gcc focuses on implementing the documented standard. If you write code that is correct according to the ISO standard, and gcc miscompiles it, your bug report will be taken seriously. Otherwise, sorry. In many cases, fixing a failure to implement the standard correctly breaks some invalid program (such as yours) that happened to work before. The GCC developers properly give priority to getting standard-conforming programs correctly.
