[Info-vax] Rust as a HS language, was: Re: Quiet?

[Bill Gunshannon]

On 4/8/22 13:23, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
> On 4/8/2022 1:13 PM, Bill Gunshannon wrote:
>> On 4/8/22 13:01, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
>>> On 4/7/2022 9:01 AM, Bill Gunshannon wrote:
>>>> On 4/6/22 12:35, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
>>>>> And today it would almost certainly not have been an issue. Most
>>>>> languages check.
>>>>
>>>> And yet, C still doesn't even after ANSI got control of it.
>>>
>>> It would probably be more difficult to implement in C/C++
>>> due to their let us call it flexible approach to pointers.
>>>
>>> It would break a lot of bad code that did not need to
>>> exceed bounds but actually did.
>>>
>>> It would require an unsafe { } construct to allow
>>> to exceed bounds where actually needed.
>>>
>>> Too complicated and breaking too much existing
>>> code. I am not surprised that it did not happen.
>>>
>>> New languages have the benefit of starting without
>>> luggage of backwards compatibility requirements.
>>
>> As I stated elsewhere, the change to ANSI C from K&R broke
>> everything.  You can not compile K&R with an ANSI C Compiler
>> and vice versa.  What better time to fix it all?
> 
> Not everything.

If you can't compile K&R with an ANSI C compiler and you can't
compile ANSI C with a K&R compiler what exactly didn't get broken?

> 
> But it would obviously have been a lot better to do it in
> 89 than in 99 or 11.
> 
> We would probably need to find someone that was actually
> in the C WG for C89 to know if the question came up and
> if it did why they decided not to change.

That would make for an interesting conversation.

bill