On Wed, 4 Jun 1997 16:57:05 -0400 (EDT)  Jim Wise wrote:

> Sure, but I'm more concerned about the reliability problems caused in
> the code that _is_ being backported.  Code which depends on ANSI C
> argument passing and other conventions (and often gcc or local
> extensions), but has been tweaked so that errors which would have
> occurred at compile time under K&R C will now occur at run time.

The concerns here are valid, but practically theoretical.  I've never
seen a type promotion bug actually cause damage.  Do people actually
see such problems "in the field"?

In the real world, I see many more of these:

- endianness problems
- assumptions about type sizes
- assumptions about the signedness of 'char'
- assumptions about the local stdio implementation

Giles