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From: Tim Rentsch <tr.17687@z991.linuxsc.com>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: encapsulating directory operations
Date: Fri, 23 May 2025 22:22:58 -0700
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Richard Heathfield <rjh@cpax.org.uk> writes:

> On 23/05/2025 22:10, Kaz Kylheku wrote:
>
>> On 2025-05-23, Richard Heathfield <rjh@cpax.org.uk> wrote:
>>
>>> On 23/05/2025 21:27, Kaz Kylheku wrote:
>>>
>>>> On 2025-05-23, Keith Thompson <Keith.S.Thompson+u@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> <snip>
>>>
>>>>> (Identifiers starting with E followed by either a digit or an uppercase
>>>>> letter are reserved;  they could be defined as macros in <errno.h>.)
>>>>
>>>> But C99 introduced, for instance "double round(double);"
>>>
>>> I am tempted to ask 'who cares?' but I will sit on my hands and
>>> be good.
>>
>> That's essentially what I'm saying.
>
> But we refuse to care for different reasons, it seems.
>
>> Who cares about the silly reserved
>> name spaces that provide nothing you can rely on to thwart future name
>> clashes.
>
> And who cares about future instability if C90 remains just as stable
> as ever it was?  (If care there is, it's caring that implementors
> continue to include C90 implementations in their repertoire.)

There's a catch though to that "future instability" matter.  Some
sets of names described in library headers, such as the ESCAPE
example of this thread, are reserved and allowed to change even
in a conforming C90 implementation.  A seemingly innocuous line
of code such as

    int towel;

could run afoul of this rule, even in a strictly C90 environment.