Re: Why does rewind() ignore errors?

Charlie Gordon wrote:
#define gets(buf) abort("gets invoked!\n")

No, that breaks working code in benign environments.

So you let the Scandinavians have their way, ...
... by 1989 who still needed to cope with ISO-646 ?

The decision was made around 1987, and the input from those
participating was that it was still enough of a problem for
their clients that at least one national body would vote
against ratification of the standard if it did not address
the issue. There was considerable debate and discussion
before the final decision. You may call that "politics",
but there was a process involved that required lots of
negotiations all along the way. We didn't have a C "czar",
and even if there had been one it isn't obvious that his
spec would have met actual user requirements as well,
overall, as the one reached through the ISO process.

A lot of people who think something is obvious to them
don't realize that there are factors they haven't considered,
or they dismiss those factors as unimportant, though they
might be very important for others. That's why a process
involving discussion and consensus is important for the
overall acceptability of the end result.

What about <iso646.h> ? What need was there to pollute the
standard with such useless crap ?

That was a stage in the further evolution of the battle over
trigraphs etc. once the C++ standards group got involved.
Again, it was essentially a political compromise in order to
gain a sufficient degree of acceptance among all involved.
If you don't want to use <iso646.h> you're free not to use it.

const char *template = "??/??/??";
printf("Enter a date using the template %s: ", template);
Many programmers will be unable to debug what they will diagnose as data
corruption.
Please save us from such an "improvement".

I think the confusion would be due mainly to some people
constantly urging programmers to ignore trigraphs. As a
standard part of the language, they need to be understood.
Certainly other parts of C are much more complicated.
.

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