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Groups > comp.std.c > #6170

Re: Add @ to basic character set?

From Keith Thompson <Keith.S.Thompson+u@gmail.com>
Newsgroups comp.std.c
Subject Re: Add @ to basic character set?
Date 2020-12-05 14:17 -0800
Organization None to speak of
Message-ID <87pn3ngao5.fsf@nosuchdomain.example.com> (permalink)
References <rqfeip$lrr$1@solani.org> <rqgae4$1u1$1@dont-email.me>

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James Kuyper <jameskuyper@alumni.caltech.edu> writes:
> On 12/5/20 2:58 AM, Philipp Klaus Krause wrote:
>> I wonder if it would make sense to add @ to the basic character set.
>> Virtually everyone is using it in comments and strings already anyway
>> (for email addresses), and I don't see anything preventing
>> implementations from supporting it, as it is available in both ASCII and
>> common EBCDIC code pages:
>> 
>> http://www.colecovision.eu/stuff/proposal-basic-@.html
>
> '@' is not in the ISO/IEC 646 invariant subset; in the Danish, Dutch,
> French, French Canadian, German, Italian, Spanish, Swedish, and Swiss
> national variants, that code point is assigned to some other character.
> With UTF-8 (on Unix-like systems) and UTF-16 (on Windows systems)
> becoming so common place, that is less of a concern than it used to be,
> but it is still something the committee is likely to pay attention to.
> There are other characters that already are part of the C basic
> character set that aren't in the invariant subset: "# [ ] { } \ | ~ ^".
> However, all of those characters played an important role in C syntax
> long before ISO/IEC 646; that's not the case for '@'. Trigraphs were
> invented to allow those characters to be used on systems that didn't
> support them natively.

Apparently the C++ committee felt that it was of so little concern that
they removed trigraphs in C++17.  I don't know of any plans to do the
same in C.

There are three printable ASCII characters that aren't in C's basic
character set: '$', '`', and '@'.  A guarantee that all three can be
used in string literals, character constants, and comments could be
useful.  (Most programmers probably already assume they can be.)

-- 
Keith Thompson (The_Other_Keith) Keith.S.Thompson+u@gmail.com
Working, but not speaking, for Philips Healthcare
void Void(void) { Void(); } /* The recursive call of the void */

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Thread

Add @ to basic character set? Philipp Klaus Krause <pkk@spth.de> - 2020-12-05 08:58 +0100
  Re: Add @ to basic character set? James Kuyper <jameskuyper@alumni.caltech.edu> - 2020-12-05 10:53 -0500
    Re: Add @ to basic character set? David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no> - 2020-12-05 17:15 +0100
      Re: Add @ to basic character set? Philipp Klaus Krause <pkk@spth.de> - 2020-12-05 20:55 +0100
    Re: Add @ to basic character set? Keith Thompson <Keith.S.Thompson+u@gmail.com> - 2020-12-05 14:17 -0800
      Re: Add @ to basic character set? Francis Glassborow <francis.glassborow@btinternet.com> - 2020-12-06 12:25 +0000
        Re: Add @ to basic character set? David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no> - 2020-12-06 13:47 +0100
          Re: Add @ to basic character set? Richard Damon <Richard@Damon-Family.org> - 2020-12-06 08:42 -0500
            Re: Add @ to basic character set? Keith Thompson <Keith.S.Thompson+u@gmail.com> - 2020-12-06 14:07 -0800
              Re: Add @ to basic character set? Richard Damon <Richard@Damon-Family.org> - 2020-12-06 17:44 -0500
                Re: Add @ to basic character set? Keith Thompson <Keith.S.Thompson+u@gmail.com> - 2020-12-06 15:49 -0800
                Re: Add @ to basic character set? Philipp Klaus Krause <pkk@spth.de> - 2020-12-07 09:31 +0100
                Re: Add @ to basic character set? Richard Damon <Richard@Damon-Family.org> - 2020-12-07 07:24 -0500
                Re: Add @ to basic character set? Keith Thompson <Keith.S.Thompson+u@gmail.com> - 2020-12-07 12:16 -0800
                Re: Add @ to basic character set? Richard Damon <Richard@Damon-Family.org> - 2020-12-07 15:51 -0500
                Re: Add @ to basic character set? Keith Thompson <Keith.S.Thompson+u@gmail.com> - 2020-12-07 13:10 -0800
                Re: Add @ to basic character set? Andreas Schwab <schwab@linux-m68k.org> - 2020-12-07 23:52 +0100
                Re: Add @ to basic character set? Keith Thompson <Keith.S.Thompson+u@gmail.com> - 2020-12-07 15:27 -0800
                Re: Add @ to basic character set? Richard Damon <Richard@Damon-Family.org> - 2020-12-07 18:54 -0500
                Re: Add @ to basic character set? Keith Thompson <Keith.S.Thompson+u@gmail.com> - 2020-12-07 16:10 -0800
                Re: Add @ to basic character set? Richard Damon <Richard@Damon-Family.org> - 2020-12-07 18:31 -0500
                Re: Add @ to basic character set? Andreas Schwab <schwab@linux-m68k.org> - 2020-12-07 23:08 +0100
              Re: Add @ to basic character set? Philipp Klaus Krause <pkk@spth.de> - 2020-12-07 09:30 +0100
      Re: Add @ to basic character set? Philipp Klaus Krause <pkk@spth.de> - 2020-12-07 09:17 +0100
  Re: Add @ to basic character set? Thomas David Rivers <rivers@dignus.com> - 2020-12-06 16:11 -0500
    Re: Add @ to basic character set? Keith Thompson <Keith.S.Thompson+u@gmail.com> - 2020-12-07 12:19 -0800
      Re: Add @ to basic character set? Thomas David Rivers <rivers@dignus.com> - 2020-12-07 17:02 -0500
  Re: Add @ to basic character set? Philipp Klaus Krause <pkk@spth.de> - 2021-03-11 22:50 +0100
    Re: Add @ to basic character set? Keith Thompson <Keith.S.Thompson+u@gmail.com> - 2021-03-11 15:40 -0800
      Re: Add @ to basic character set? Philipp Klaus Krause <pkk@spth.de> - 2021-03-12 15:25 +0100
    Re: Add @ to basic character set? Tim Rentsch <tr.17687@z991.linuxsc.com> - 2021-07-10 08:46 -0700

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