Re: Bison scanner patch to fix POSIX incompatibilities, etc.

[Paul Eggert]

> From: Akim Demaille <address@hidden>
> Date: 06 Nov 2002 10:28:01 +0100
> 
> As for comments, I only found:

In C, backslash-newline processing is done before comments are
recognized.  I assume that the same is true for C++; at least, that's
what GCC 3.2 does.

> | In hand-written code I have seen it only for strings (and in the
> | International Obfuscated C code contest -- I won a prize there once
> | :-).  
> 
> Congrats :)  I didn't know that.  Puke...

Hey, I _used_ that code to ship files to others back in the days when
bandwidth was expensive and not everybody had gzip/compress/uuencode/etc.
It wasn't just a contest entry, honest!

> |  * C-language code must have properly nested occurrences of "{" and
> |    "}".  If braces are spelled any other way (e.g., via a macro like
> |    CLOSE_BRACE or via a digraph) then the resulting behavior is
> |    undefined.
> 
> Actually, why make it undefined?  Why not saying that it is just not
> recognized.

I guess that's OK, though I'd have to revert the digraph changes to
Bison.

> Why keeping digraphs?

The main argument for digraphs is that POSIX requires them now (if
only accidentally, perhaps), and that supporting them is fairly easy.

I guess I will run this issue by the POSIX committee and see what they
say.  I'll urge that digraphs not be supported, but it's not a big
deal either way for me.