(Fwd) Use of \

William C. Saphir (wcs@nas.nasa.gov)
Thu, 14 Mar 1996 12:41:48 -0800

Seems I am 0 for 2 so far on reporting things that happened
at the meeting. The straw vote for '\' vs. '%' was 12-4 in favor
of '\'. So '\' is currently the leading contender and
Dick's note below presents a very good reason why it shouldn't be.

Bill

--- Forwarded mail from treumann@kgn.ibm.com (Dick Treumann)

Date: Thu, 14 Mar 1996 15:16:55 -0500
From: treumann@kgn.ibm.com (Dick Treumann)

Bill,

Since the straw vote on escape characters did not put \ in strong running,
I am sending this note only to you. If \ looked like a contender I would
send it to mpi-dynamic.

The use of \ would be a mistake. ANSI C specifies a small set of
escape sequences for use in string literals and states the the meaning of
any other sequences of \ followed by a character are UNDEFINED. If you
feed printf("<\ >\n") to many different C compilers you will see error
messages from some and either:
<\ >
or
< >
from the others. All three responses are legit since ANSI says it is
undefined.

Regards - DicK

Dick Treumann POWER Parallel Division
(Internet) treumann@kgn.ibm.com IBM -- Poughkeepsie, NY
(VNET) TREUMANN at KGNVMC Tel: (914) 433-7846
(internal) treumann@windsurf.kgn.ibm.com Fax: (914) 433-8363

---End of forwarded mail from treumann@kgn.ibm.com (Dick Treumann)