From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
Message-Id: <200008011603.MAA05857@egyptian-gods.MIT.EDU>
To: 9fans@cse.psu.edu
Subject: Re: [9fans] Installing the updates
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Tue, 01 Aug 2000 14:31:24 GMT."
             <8m6dhf$74d$1@inputplus.demon.co.uk> 
Date: Tue,  1 Aug 2000 12:03:38 -0400
From: Greg Hudson <ghudson@MIT.EDU>
Topicbox-Message-UUID: f0a452b0-eac8-11e9-9e20-41e7f4b1d025

> I think he's heard the argument but doesn't agree.

It would be nice if Pike could present a compelling argument.  His web
page states only:

	Multiple inclusions are a bane of systems programming.  It's
	not rare to have files included five or more times to compile
	a single C source file.  The Unix /usr/include/sys stuff is
	terrible this way.

Where's the horror here?  Computers are fast.  Pushing extra work on
programmers and creating an unnecessary portability issue is a high
cost.  Reading a header file five or more times during compilation is
a low cost (and one which can be optimized away for ifdef-protected
headers; I'm told gcc does so).