* Reply to a message in personal_mail.
Bill Birrell wrote in a message to Tom Torfs:
[about the implicit declaration of main() returning int]
 > What's wrong with is that in the next revision of the
 > C standard it will most likely be prohibited.
 BB>     But in the meantime it *is* true and correct, so your comment
 BB> is less than wholly appropriate. We cannot anticipate changes which
 BB> have not yet occurred, or substitute our opinions on probability
 BB> for established facts.
AFAIK, relying on implicit declarations has been considered bad programming 
practice for quite some time. Furthermore, a draft for C9X was published so 
it becomes quite easy to "anticipate" most of the changes for the near future 
of C. 
 BB> I personally doubt that you *can* make such a change without 
 BB> invalidating all legacy code, and the present standard forbids 
 BB> *that*.
How about:
1.8 FUTURE DIRECTIONS

   Certain features are obsolescent , which means that they may be considered 
for withdrawal in future revisions of the Standard.  They are retained in the 
Standard because of their widespread use, but their use in new 
implementations (for implementation features) or new programs (for language 
or library features) is discouraged.  
greetings,
Tom
tomtorfs@village.uunet.be
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