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From: mitchalsup@aol.com (MitchAlsup1)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: Computer architects leaving Intel...
Date: Sun, 8 Sep 2024 00:12:40 +0000
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On Sat, 7 Sep 2024 23:45:45 +0000, Tim Rentsch wrote:

> anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) writes:
>
>> Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca> writes:
>>
>>>> Specifications are an agreement between the supplier and the client.
>>>> The
>>>
>>> The problem here is that the C standard, seen as a contract, is unfair
>>> to the programmer, because it's so excruciatingly hard to write code
>>> that is guaranteed to be free from UB.
>>
>> For programs there is no conformance level "free from UB" in the C
>> standard.
>
> The C standard doesn't define any conformance "levels":  it defines
> the term "strictly conforming program", for its own convenience in
> defining the language;  it also defines the term "conforming
> program", for no apparent purpose at all.  In both cases however
> what is given are simply definitions;  there is no reason an
> interested party couldn't give a definition of some other term, for
> the purpose of identifying a class of C programs that have some
> particular property -- such as being free from undefined behavior --
> where membership in the class is completely determined by statements
> in the C standard, being used as a reference document.
>
>> There are two conformance levels for programs:
>>
>> 1) A strictly conforming program shall use only those features of the
>>    language and library specified in this International Standard.
>>    This excludes all programs that terminate, including the "Hello,
>>    World" program.  [...]
>
> I don't know why you say this.  Which aspects of the definition for
> "strictly conforming program" do you think are violated by a typical
> 'Hello, World' program?  I'm confident the people who wrote the C
> standard would say such a program is strictly conforming.

The standard "Hello World !" program does not return a value to
<effectively> crt0.

Secondarily while one is supposed to return 0 for success and
something else for failure, there is no standard C defined way
that this is related back to the invoker of the program.

Another issue is that main() may not have the 3 defined arguments
and the containing environment is not supposed to complain when
argc, arv, and envp are unused or even unnamed as arguments.