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From: Keith Thompson <Keith.S.Thompson+u@gmail.com>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: _BitInt(N)
Date: Tue, 02 Dec 2025 15:33:04 -0800
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Philipp Klaus Krause <pkk@spth.de> 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.

But trigraphs have been removed in C23.

-- 
Keith Thompson (The_Other_Keith) Keith.S.Thompson+u@gmail.com
void Void(void) { Void(); } /* The recursive call of the void */