3 Feb
2025
3 Feb
'25
2:32 p.m.
It was thus said that the Great ben via cctalk once stated:
You will have to evaluate the C compiler in question. The C Standard
covers not only the C language, but of a library as well, so your concerns
about bugs applies to both the compiler and the library that comes with it.
And it's not like there's just one C compiler everybody uses.
While a C99 compiler will work with K&R style code, and may very well
generate better code, there may still be issues because newer C compilers
take advantage of undefined behavior to optimize the code, to the degree
that once valid C code now exhibits bugs. For instance, this fragment of
code:
/* a and b are signed integers */
if (a + b < a) /* check for overflow */
handle_it();
may very well be removed because signed overflow in C is undefined, and by
definition (per the compiler writers) a programmer will never intentionally
invoke undefined bahavior, the code can be removed because it will never be
true (and this is current behavior! Really!).
So it could be that C99 will work for you, it might not. A C89-only
compiler will work---it'll still accept K&R style code, and it will be old
enough to avoid the "exploit undefined behavior for better benchmarks"
compilers we have today. Or find an old K&R C compiler. They still exist,
but generate very bad code.
-spc
At the root of Open Source is you, the user, have the right to the
source code.
In the early days, that's as far as it went but especially after the
Morris Worm, security became very important, Open Source afforded
users the ability to inspect the code for vulnerabilities in ways that
you could not if all you had was the binaries.
But open source should have fixed versions, if possible.
Look at C compilers. I need a K&R C compiler for say 8088 build.
I might not want the latest C standard.
What version has the fewest bugs.