C++ types

[Matthew Saltzman]

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.

-- 
                Matthew Saltzman

Clemson University Math Sciences
mjs AT clemson DOT edu
http://www.math.clemson.edu/~mjs