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Category: C standard

C Standards: the triumph of bureaucracy

September 1, 2026 vy c programming, C standard, programming languages

Draft standards C89  The ANSI standard. C23 the most recent draft. Notes and quotes on C standard. Three modest proposals for fixing the C standard. 

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don’t defer

December 4, 2023 vy C standard

There is a proposal to add “defer” to C. Its biggest example is taken from code that was originally designed to not manage storage at

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Threads in C

March 26, 2022 vy C standard

There is a nice example thread semantics in a paper by David Goldblatt (P1916R0)  which illustrates a couple of things about multi-core processing – including

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PLOS 2021 paper: How ISO-C became unusable for operating system development

October 6, 2021 vy C standard, operating systems
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Memory model and semantics for C

August 3, 2021 vy C standard

A perceptive note from Linus Torvalds about the C/C++ “memory model” is reproduced below. From Linus Torvalds <> Date Thu, 7 Jun 2018 08:40:49 -0700

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unfashionable C

May 21, 2021 vy C standard, computer architecture, programming languages

In computer science academia, C  along with UNIX, and PDP11s, is as unfashionable as can be: the equivalent of other 1970’s relics, like polyester leisure

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Undefined behavior in C is a reading error.

May 19, 2021 vy C standard

Considering how important “undefined behavior” has become to C semantics and the ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22/WG14 Committee, the lack of any reference to it in the K&R

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ISO C is not a serious programming language

May 16, 2021 vy C standard, programming languages, software security

The C Standards process over the last few decades has addressed both optimization and pointer type safety largely through a concept called “undefined behavior”.  The

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Dennis Ritchie on alias analysis in the C programming language 1988

March 19, 2021 vy C standard, programming languages

This 1998 note by Dennis Ritchie from comp.lang.c  (and also  here ) is very current since the concept of noalias has definitely crept back into

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Kafka The Castle

undefined behavior and the purpose of C

December 31, 2018 vy C standard, programming languages

The C programming language is designed to  let programmers  work  at both low and high levels. In particular, for applications like operating system development,  cryptography, 

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