Re: Multitude of Problems

[enag@ifi.uio.no (Erik Naggum)]

Jim Showalter responds to Ted Holden:

    Chaining is not defined as part of the C ANSI standard, to the
    best of my knowledge. Is it? If not, then any chaining that is
    done for C programs is not an inherent part of C, is probably ALSO
    a proprietary and non-portable vendor-specific directive, and is
    therefore no better or worse than the equivalent support offered
    for Ada on PCs. Isn't it fairly standard for PC compiler vendors
    to kludge in this capability in some way? Turbo Pascal, for
    example, offers a chaining capability, but that certainly isn't
    part of any Pascal standard I'm aware of.

Assuming that "chain" means that one program can start another in its
place, this is an operating system (dependent) facility.  C is tied to
UNIX in this manner, and the library and system calls exist for this
purpose, among others.  Look for the exec family of functions.  Most
implementations of C have these functions.

POSIX addresses this issue.  The Ada bindings is what you're looking
for.

    By the way, do you have any idea how insulting it is when you say
    something about Ada that implies it will kill soldiers?

I was tempted to comment on the previous remark, but find it more
appropriate now:

	Programming languages don't kill people.  People kill people.

(Sorry, couldn't resist.)

    Are all C compilers the same across platforms?  Are the C
    compilers from the same VENDOR even the same across platforms?

If we're going to make comparisons, let's make them between ANSI C
X3.159-1989 and MIL-STD-1814A Ada, not between Microsoft C, Turbo C,
QuickC, etc, and MIL-STD-1814A Ada.  The various toy C implementations
are not exactly known for consistency or adherence to standards.

    Doubtful -- if all UNIX's are the same, what's the point of POSIX?

POSIX also pushes the state of the art.

Jim, this was, all in all, an excellent reply to Ted Holden.  Thanks.

</Erik>
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Erik Naggum             Professional Programmer            +47-2-836-863
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