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From: Tim Rentsch
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: _BitInt(N)
Date: Mon, 15 Dec 2025 11:01:50 -0800
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Richard Heathfield writes:
> On 02/12/2025 23:33, Keith Thompson wrote:
>
>> Philipp Klaus Krause writes:
>>
>>> Am 02.12.25 um 08:31 schrieb David Brown:
>>>
>>>> But in days gone by if anyone ever needed to use trigraphs for C
>>>> programming, then I am sure they would happily switch to a
>>>> word-based language given half a chance. I find "{ }" nicer than
>>>> "begin end", but I'd pick "begin end" over "??< ??>" any day!
>>>
>>> AFAIK, there never was a real user of trigraphs (unless you count
>>> compiler test suites). AFAIK for all real-world use digraphs were
>>> sufficient.
>>
>> There have been actual uses of trigraphs. Richard Heathfield posted
>> this on this newsgroup in 2010 :
>>
>> Yes, they are still needed, for example in some mainframe
>> environments. They make the code look astoundingly ugly, but
>> they do at least make it work. It is not uncommon for "normal"
>> C code to be written and tested on PCs, then run through
>> a conversion program to replace monographs with trigraphs
>> where required before transfer to the mainframe for final
>> testing. That way, you get the readability where it matters,
>> and the usability where /that/ matters.
>
> Nostalgia ain't what it used to be, but yes, I did indeed write that,
> and yes, such workarounds are still used.
>
>> But trigraphs have been removed in C23.
>
> Then so, in some mainframe environments, have curly braces. I suppose
> their fix will be to not adopt C23.
Curly braces are still available by means of the digraphs <% and %>.