Path: csiph.com!news.mixmin.net!eternal-september.org!reader01.eternal-september.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail From: Tim Rentsch Newsgroups: comp.lang.c Subject: Re: Are there any conformant C compilers? Date: Thu, 15 Sep 2022 17:29:36 -0700 Organization: A noiseless patient Spider Lines: 44 Message-ID: <86zgf0kvpr.fsf@linuxsc.com> References: <87fsh9iz25.fsf@bsb.me.uk> <11d1020d-144d-4da0-88c1-3d56b4160c2an@googlegroups.com> <87pmgdh85z.fsf@bsb.me.uk> <878rn1h5lk.fsf@bsb.me.uk> <9586550c-6a4b-4a75-a10a-25f26e109b85n@googlegroups.com> <87tu5pfm0t.fsf@bsb.me.uk> <38331300-95c3-4499-aa89-062b82974309n@googlegroups.com> <87czccfyq0.fsf@bsb.me.uk> <86mtb5p6gd.fsf@linuxsc.com> <865yhrpcl9.fsf@linuxsc.com> <20220913082247.233@kylheku.com> <86leqmm319.fsf@linuxsc.com> <20220914162303.734@kylheku.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Injection-Info: reader01.eternal-september.org; posting-host="4a0db673561e161ba81b81715d43a3e1"; logging-data="3636978"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@eternal-september.org"; posting-account="U2FsdGVkX18yIOS2xAtVQW/na+id7RynGyFAod2DZI8=" User-Agent: Gnus/5.11 (Gnus v5.11) Emacs/22.4 (gnu/linux) Cancel-Lock: sha1:Nql6rNX6USLCZ0y/kKKcpDMBnBs= sha1:DOJ8YPS3t2USyE+gjvM5lB+Fwkk= Xref: csiph.com comp.lang.c:167736 Kaz Kylheku <480-992-1380@kylheku.com> writes: > On 2022-09-14, Tim Rentsch wrote: > >> Kaz Kylheku <480-992-1380@kylheku.com> writes: >> >>> On 2022-09-13, Tim Rentsch wrote: >>> >>>> Bart writes: >>>> >>>>> On 12/09/2022 05:22, Tim Rentsch wrote: >>>>> >>>>>> Ben Bacarisse writes: >>>>>> >>>>>>> Thinking about it a bit more, the common factor with all literals is >>>>>>> that they represent /anonymous/ values. Without compound literals you >>>>>>> could not write a value of any aggregate type, other than char[]. >>>>>> >>>>>> The key difference is that "constants" are values, and "literals" >>>>>> are objects. >>>>> >>>>> So a literal like 726163 is an object, and not a value? >>>> >>>> As far as ISO C is concerned, the token '726163' is a constant, >>>> not a literal, and is a value rather than an object. >>> >>> The term "literal" in computer science is a shortening of >>> "literal constant". (There are also symbolic/manifest constants.) >> >> I am not aware of any authoritative reference that defines the >> term "literal" for the field of computer science. > > The Oxford Dictionary of Computer Science (7th ed, 2016) has an entry: > > literal > > A word or symbol in a program that stands for itself rather than as a > name for something else, i.e. an object whose value is determined by > its denotation. Numbers are literals; if other symbols are used as > literals it is necessary to use some form of quoting mechanism to > distinguish them from variables [...] The word "constant" has been used in mathematics for more than 100 years before programming languages existed.