If C is so evil why is it so successful?

[Alfred M. Szmidt]

   It was thus said that the Great Alfred M. Szmidt via cctalk once stated:
   > 
   >        > From: Alfred M. Szmidt
   > 
   >        > No even the following program:
   >        >   int main (void) { return 0; }
   >        > is guaranteed to work
   > 
   >    I'm missing something: why not?
   > 
   > It boils down to pedantism.  The encoding of the above is ASCII, and
   > the encoding type of a C program is implementation defined.  

     Name *ONE* computer langauge where this *ISN'T* the case.  Until then,
   I'll consider this a completely bogus claim.  Meanwhile, is *this* better?

The input alphabet is implementation defined, if you want portable you
cannot depend on implementation defined behaviour.  But you clearly
haven't bothered reading the C standard, so you probobly should do
that now.