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  • Re: VAX

    From Tim Rentsch@tr.17687@z991.linuxsc.com to comp.lang.c on Mon Dec 15 11:51:43 2025
    From Newsgroup: comp.lang.c

    James Kuyper <jameskuyper@alumni.caltech.edu> writes:

    On 2025-08-05 17:25, Kaz Kylheku wrote:

    On 2025-08-05, Keith Thompson <Keith.S.Thompson+u@gmail.com> wrote:

    Breaking existing code that uses "_BitInt" as an identifier is
    a non-issue. There very probably is no such code.

    However, that doesn't mean GCC can carelessly introduce identifiers
    in this namespace.

    GCC does not define a complete C implementation; it doesn't provide a
    library. Libraries are provided by other projects: Glibc, Musl,
    ucLibc, ...

    Those libraries are C implementors also, and get to name things
    in the reserved namespace.

    GCC cannot be implemented in such a way as to create a fully conforming implementation of C when used in connection with an arbitrary
    implementation of the C standard library. This is just one example of a
    more general potential problem: Both gcc and the library must use some reserved identifiers, and they might have made conflicting choices. [...]

    I'm not sure this assertion is right exactly. The interface to any implementation of the standard library is through a well-defined set
    of header files. In principle the rest of a C implementation could
    examine those header files programmatically and systematically avoid
    any conflicts. Similarly the run-time libraries of the standard
    library can be examined to avoid any conflicts there. Certainly it
    isn't convenient to construct such an implementation, but it does
    seem to be possible.
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