Path: csiph.com!eternal-september.org!feeder.eternal-september.org!nntp.eternal-september.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail From: John Ames Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.misc,alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: naughty Pascal Date: Tue, 6 Jan 2026 09:25:22 -0800 Organization: A noiseless patient Spider Lines: 23 Message-ID: <20260106092522.0000696e@gmail.com> References: <10iutjt$1c0aq$2@dont-email.me> <79ScnZHy-uXnP8n0nZ2dnZfqnPadnZ2d@giganews.com> <4oycne7Wk4RQ6sj0nZ2dnZfqnPidnZ2d@giganews.com> <10j48fv$2t1h9$12@dont-email.me> <10j5qgf$3etcd$6@dont-email.me> <10j60bb$3hhps$1@dont-email.me> <7cadnTBwKKzA68r0nZ2dnZfqn_idnZ2d@giganews.com> <10jak55$13ji1$2@dont-email.me> <10jh3n1$3644m$1@nntp.eternal-september.org> <20260105115058.000054fc@gmail.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Injection-Date: Tue, 06 Jan 2026 17:25:26 +0000 (UTC) Injection-Info: dont-email.me; posting-host="ce6fce244b408b41e7cc12ecf2215473"; logging-data="4191050"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@eternal-september.org"; posting-account="U2FsdGVkX1+U7maEo3PTVvhzUATjP3xVJlh82VQVjO0=" Cancel-Lock: sha1:VIJzRSV+4icUQV+fj5HmWptt19c= X-Newsreader: Claws Mail 4.3.0 (GTK 3.24.42; x86_64-w64-mingw32) Xref: csiph.com comp.os.linux.misc:80595 alt.folklore.computers:233266 On Tue, 06 Jan 2026 10:39:02 +0000 Richard Kettlewell wrote: > Also, the "call the OS" part of userland programs has to be > represented somehow in whatever language they are written in. C made > that partially independent of the underlying OS in the sense that the > stdio.h functions work much the same on a range of platforms (but it > does make some assumptions about the OS=E2=80=99s underlying IO model). As > well as improving portability, it means a bit less re-learning for > programmers as we migrate around platforms. Yeah - C isn't perfect, but they did a couple of very critical Right Things in *A.* making as much of the runtime environment as possible into standard C language constructs (everything but the bare bones is Just Another Function, and if you don't like it you can write your own) and *B.* providing (for the time) a fairly comprehensive std. library that doesn't make *too* many assumptions about the larger environment; you can write batch-oriented programs just as easily as interactive ones, and nothing is bent toward a record-oriented model like vanilla Pascal assumes. (There *is* a bit of a bent towards line-oriented input vs. raw character streams, under the hood, but I'm not 100% on whether that's a C thing or a Unix thing.)