Matthew Saltzman wrote:
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.
You have it right Matt. I recall it was K&R C at first and there
were few libraries you could include. It was much later ANSI-C showed up
and it was much nicer. I never got real interested in C++ because I
never used it to make a living.
--
Karl F. Larsen, AKA K5DI
Linux User
#450462 http://counter.li.org.
