On Sun, 2007-09-02 at 15:26 -0600, Karl Larsen wrote:
> When I was MUCH younger and using an old Fortran because that was
> what we had, I learned about the subtle changes you can make by a simple
> change. I tried to compile some of my old code on the Linux Fortran 97
> and they would all error out. I fixed them and it was not too hard.
> Around 1970 I got interested in C. I still have books of that vintage
> and was amazed that Unix was made with C. At that time I think ANCI C
> was in style.
That would have been the dialect known as "K&R C"--the language
described in the original edition of Kernighan and Ritchie's book.
I believe the ANSI C (later ISO C) standard was adopted in the early
'90s. It added function prototypes and standardized the library, among
other changes.
There is now a new C standard (nicknamed "C99"), which includes some
additional features. Most compilers haven't fully implemented this
version yet.
The best references for comparison of the various C versions are the
various editions of the Harbison and Steele book. At least the 4th
edition also has a good discussion of the relationship between C and C++
and how to write code that is as close as possible to portable between
the two languages.
--
Matthew Saltzman
Clemson University Math Sciences
mjs AT clemson DOT edu
http://www.math.clemson.edu/~mjs
