On (18 May 97) Cameron Clark wrote to Tika Carr...
[ mention of the C++ draft standard ]
 CC>     Am I correct in assuming that "draft" means what is suggests? That
 CC> is, that it is a propasal and possibly not what was accepted by the
 CC>     standards committe.
Yes.  The ANSI requires that anything that's going to become an ANSI
standard be released for two public comment sessions.  This was the
second of those.
[ mention of drastic changes in standards elided ]
The C++ standard has been relatively stable for quite some time now.
Roughly 3 years ago, the committee voted that they would no longer allow
new features to be added to the language.  Since then, they've been
working on making things more consistent, and getting all the rules to
work together.  From the looks of things, there have been quite a few
defects found in the wording in different parts of the draft.  However,
I've only seen what looks like reason to make one technical change.
The draft has a section that tries to give compilers permission to do a
particular optimization, but it looks like the section is unnecessary
and may well be eliminated.  The optimization will still generally be
possible, but it'll just be up to the compiler to ensure that it's
transparent.
There will still doubtless be more changes, but most of them involve
getting the rules in the standard to say what people have already agreed
is correct, not a matter of changing what's intended.
    Later,
    Jerry.
... The Universe is a figment of its own imagination.
--- PPoint 1.90
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