Re: ANSI C standard of zsh

[Clinton Bunch <cdb_zsh@zentaur.org>]

On 3/13/2024 11:49, Oliver Kiddle wrote:
> Bart Schaefer wrote:
>> On Tue, Mar 12, 2024 at 2:44 PM Clinton Bunch <cdb_zsh@zentaur.org> wrote:
>>>   I propose that we update the development guide to remove the bit about the 1989 standard (much less K&R compatibility) since it is no longer true, and I personally question if it even makes sense as a goal 30+ years in to development.
> No objections from me. Replacement wording would be welcome. We're using
> string pasting (##) in quite a few places despite that being "not
> available".
>
Here is my first cut at replacement wording for the first two paragraphs 
of the C coding style section:

The primary language is standard C and modern versions of Zsh assume at 
least the 1999 standard is available.  While much of the code is written 
to be compatible with older C standards, it has been decided that 
maintaining compatibility with those standards has become too limiting 
and is not necessary for even legacy (though not necessarily vintage) 
systems.

If you wish to use features not present in the ANSI C 99 standard, there 
are preprocessor macros to provide safe access to some of these.  Always 
use the macros if you want to use these facilities.