C99 and Xconq (was Re: Fixes for string functions)

[Eric McDonald <mcdonald at phy dot cmich dot edu>]

On Thu, 28 Aug 2003, Jim Kingdon wrote:

> vsnprintf is in C99.  See
> http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/007904975/functions/vfprintf.html
> for a standard.

Maybe we could officially allow C99 into Xconq. It has already 
found its way in via C++/C99 double-slash comments. See the 
commented out K&R function declarations for example of their 
current usage in Xconq (in util.c). (I find it somewhat amusing: 
K&R commented out with C++ double-slashes.)

Aside from having vsnprintf and kin available, we would also be 
able to use the "inline" keyword for directing the compiler to do 
explicit inlining (provided optimization is turned on).

> But you are right, it isn't in C89.  At least so far, I've avoided
> assuming it for xconq purposes.

Maybe we should reconsider. We just need to try and verify that 
any reasonably modern C compiler/libraries on any of our target 
platforms support C99 completely.

I think a reasonable set of compilers to look at would be Visual 
C++, Codewarrior, gcc/glibc on Linux and Cygwin, gcc and Sun's C 
library on Solaris (if that is currently a workable combination), 
and the SunWorkshop C compiler. I left out *BSD, HPUX, Irix, 
OSF/Tru64, and AIX because I haven't seen any indication that 
anyone is running Xconq on those platforms.

Any thoughts?

-Eric