[Info-vax] misstatement of Unix origin [was Re: A portable VMS, was: Re: OS Ancestry]

[Arne Vajhøj]

On 5/24/2021 9:06 PM, Bill Gunshannon wrote:
> On 5/24/21 7:58 PM, Dave Froble wrote:
>> On 5/24/2021 2:05 PM, Simon Clubley wrote:
>>> The choice of implementation language does not decide the functionality
>>> of an operating system. It is however a major factor in how easy or not
>>> it is to port that operating system to another architecture.
>>
>> Even when (hawk, spit, gag) C doesn't work the same on different 
>> architectures?
> 
> Got any good examples?  Are you sure it wasn't just a bad
> implementation?

C compiler bugs are getting relative rare today.

But the C standard leaves a lot to the implementation.

Character set, actual size of basic data types, ones vs
twos complement, FP format, data alignment, actual size of
size_t, a lot around volatile etc.etc..

This makes it possible to write a "hardware close"
C compiler on any platform.

But it also makes it a bit tricky to write a C
program with guaranteed behavior on all
standard compliant C compilers.

Arne