[Info-vax] C limitations, was: Re: VMS process communication

[bill]

On 4/23/2023 3:38 PM, Dan Cross wrote:
> In article <kakrvrFq0fdU9 at mid.individual.net>,
> bill  <bill.gunshannon at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On 4/23/2023 9:54 AM, Bob Eager wrote:
>>> On Sun, 23 Apr 2023 09:51:11 -0400, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
>>>
>>>> On 4/23/2023 9:46 AM, bill wrote:
>>>>> On 4/22/2023 7:47 PM, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
>>>>>> True. In C the isdigit function would be much better than a range
>>>>>> check.
>>>>>
>>>>> A cute idea, but also a modern accretion. Early C didn't have it and as
>>>>> much as people like to say comparing a char to it's numeric value is
>>>>> not a good idea it was quite common at one time.  I know,
>>>>> because I was the one tasked with porting some of this code to Primix
>>>>> where the chars all had a different numeric value.  I don't know why
>>>>> they did it, but they did.
>>>>
>>>> Different people may have different definitions of "modern".
>>>>
>>>> isdigit is in C89 so it has been standard for over 30 years.
>>>
>>> It's in the original K&R book, so that's back as far as 1978. Hardly a
>>> 'modern accretion'!
>>
>> It is not in Ultrix-11 :-).  I assume that also means V7.
> 
> It is certainly in V7 and is referenced all over Ultrix-11,
> though curiously, `ctype.h` seems to be missing from the archive
> I have of that.  However, it's in v7m.
> 
>> Don't remember it in System III.
> 
> It was definitely in System III.
> 
>> Don't know when it came
>> about but I was already trying to port a lot of Univ C
>> programs by 1982.  A bit before C89.

> 
> That's very odd.  Was that some kind of micro?


Typo.  Should have been just Unix C.  I was porting
to Primos and Primix.
Mostly stuff from the comp.sources groups.  Very little of it was
portable.  Even with a lot of massaging.  But the charset values
was the biggest killer because so many programs assumed 0-127 as
ordinal value of the ASCII charset.

bill