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Re: Character display

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On 07/17/2015 09:57 PM, David Kleinecke wrote:
> On Friday, July 17, 2015 at 1:20:27 PM UTC-7, James Kuyper wrote:
>> On 07/17/2015 03:51 PM, David Kleinecke wrote:
>>> I have been thinking about the ideal way to handle text data in C. The 
>>> point of departure is my disapproval of section 5.2.2 of the C90 
>>> Standard (repeated in all later Standards). I am not arguing for
>>> changes in C (outside of 5.2.2) but rather how to accommodate what 
>>> I feel is ideal in Standard Freestanding C90.
>>
>> Then you're facing a rather severe fundamental conceptual problem.
>> Freestanding C (all versions) has no way of displaying characters. The
>> only thing that 5.2.2 says which is meaningful in that context is
>> 5.2.2p3: "Each of these escape sequences shall produce a unique
>> implementation-defined value which can be stored in a single char
>> object. The external representations in a text file need not be
>> identical to the internal representations, and are outside the scope of
>> this International Standard."
> 
> Did you read my last paragraph? The answer is there.

Frankly, I consider your proposed replacement for 5.2.2
incomprehensible. I don't even understand it well enough to figure out
what it is I disagree with.  However, even if the committee disagrees
with me about that, your display_a() is not a solution the committee is
likely to accept for freestanding C. The reason why freestanding
implementations don't have to provide a way to display characters is
because the rules for freestanding implementations are targeted at
platforms where there may be no way to display characters.

If the ability to display characters is important for your concept of C
(and if you care about whether or not your concept has any influence on
development of the C standard), then you'd be better off deciding what
it is you don't like about hosted C, and propose either changes to the
rules for hosted C, or new rules for a third category intermediate
between the two. Note: that second option isn't likely to be acceptable
- the committee is trying (unsuccessfully, in my opinion, based upon
C2011) to avoid creating an increasing variety of different types of C.
-- 
James Kuyper

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Thread

Character display David Kleinecke <dkleinecke@gmail.com> - 2015-07-17 12:51 -0700
  Re: Character display James Kuyper <jameskuyper@verizon.net> - 2015-07-17 16:20 -0400
    Re: Character display David Kleinecke <dkleinecke@gmail.com> - 2015-07-17 18:57 -0700
      Re: Character display James Kuyper <jameskuyper@verizon.net> - 2015-07-17 23:22 -0400
      Re: Character display Malcolm McLean <malcolm.mclean5@btinternet.com> - 2015-07-18 10:18 -0700
  Re: Character display Keith Thompson <kst-u@mib.org> - 2015-07-17 13:44 -0700
    Re: Character display David Kleinecke <dkleinecke@gmail.com> - 2015-07-17 19:06 -0700
      Re: Character display Keith Thompson <kst-u@mib.org> - 2015-07-17 21:33 -0700
      Re: Character display Geoff <geoff@invalid.invalid> - 2015-07-18 00:33 -0700
        Re: Character display Geoff <geoff@invalid.invalid> - 2015-07-18 10:09 -0700
        Re: Character display James Kuyper <jameskuyper@verizon.net> - 2015-07-18 13:45 -0400
        Re: Character display David Kleinecke <dkleinecke@gmail.com> - 2015-07-18 18:51 -0700
          Re: Character display Keith Thompson <kst-u@mib.org> - 2015-07-18 21:08 -0700
            Re: Character display Malcolm McLean <malcolm.mclean5@btinternet.com> - 2015-07-19 00:33 -0700
              Re: Character display Robert Wessel <robertwessel2@yahoo.com> - 2015-07-19 17:03 -0500

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