CompuServe Messages

>Hey, that's legal, according to the ANSI standard! Legal: yes. Conforming: depends. >#pragma is, in my opinion, a misfeature of the standard because >there is no regulation or registration of pragmas. Any other >solution would have been ugly and disgusting, too, however, >so we run with what we've got. Right. It would be nice to get something more solid, but there isn't really much more than can be done. >Basically, the #pragma statement allows the vendor to claim full >ANSI compliance but still include machine-dependant things – >two inherently contradictory goals, but both necessary/valuable. Right, but not necessarily at the same time. Anyway, yes, both are indeed necessary and valuable. Of course the "evil" is that the standard is written with the intent of "general purpose" language, and that isn't good enough some times on specific platforms. Of course the liberty that #pragma provides goes beyond that too.