David Tribble's
Texts, Articles, Proposals, and Letters

• Programming and Computer Science
• C and C++ : Proposals and Suggestions
• Java : Proposals and Suggestions
• Other Proposals and Suggestions
• Mathematics, Logic, and Science
• Letters
• Miscellaneous
• Related Links

• [html]  Interface Classes in C++
  Feb 2007
  A short introduction to using interface classes in C++ programs.
• [html]  The Anti-Terrorism Software License
  Dec 2006
  A software copyright and licensing notice to include within source code.
• [html]  The Honalee LR(k) Algorithm
  Apr 2006
  Describes an efficient algorithm for constructing the minimal collection of canonical LR(k) item sets for a grammar, which are used to build the parsing tables for a bottom-up LR parser.
• [html]  Go To Statement Considered Harmful - A Retrospective
  Feb 2005
  An examination of Edsger Dijkstra's seminal 1968 letter to Communications of the ACM, entitled "Go To Statement Considered Harmful", annotated and reconsidered from a historical perspective.
• [html]  Questions: Java Programming
  May 2003
  Questions about advanced Java programming knowledge.
• [html]  Incompatibilities Between ISO C and ISO C++
  Aug 2001
  A list of the incompatible features between the two programming languages.
• [html]  Signing Documents with PGP
  Aug 1999
  A short tutorial about using PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) to sign text files with a cryptographic authentication signature.
• [html]  Filename Pattern Matching
  Dec 1997
  My article in The C/C++ Users Journal.
  Source code: fpattern.c, fpattern.h.

These are letters, proposals, letters, and texts that I have written or received from various people dealing with the ISO standard C and C++ languages.

Comments and Defect Reports on the ISO C Programming Language Standard

• [text] DR: Plain char as signed.
  — Rejected.
• [text] Comment: complex is not always a keyword.
  — Considered and fixed, now part of ISO/IEC 9899:1999 (C99).
• [text] Comment: Source characters not allowed as UCNs.
  — Considered, but no change.
• [text] Comment: Useless __STDC__ macro.
  — Considered, but no change.
• [text] Comment: Modifiable argv pointers.
  — Rejected.
• [text] Comment: NULL macro type.
  — Rejected.
• [text] Comment: isprint('\t').
  — Considered, but no change.
• [text] Comment: Bitfield widths.
  — Considered, but no change.

Time and Date Proposals

• [html] Proposal for additional constraints on the time_t type to the ISO/IEC C standard library.
  — Not submitted yet.
• [html] Proposal to add a long time type to the ISO/IEC C standard library.
  Source code: c0xlongtime.c, c0xlongtime.h.
  — Not submitted yet.
• [html] Proposal to add calendar types and functions to the ISO/IEC C standard library.
  Source code: c0xcalendar.c, c0xcalendar.h.
  — Not submitted yet.
• [html] Proposal to add a timezone type to the ISO/IEC C standard library.
  Source code: c0xtimezone.c, c0xtimezone.h.
  — Not submitted yet.
• [html] Proposal to add an extended time datatype to the ISO/IEC C and C++ standard libraries.
  — Abandoned. Superseded by the proposals above.

File and Directory Proposals

• [html] Proposal to add file inquiry functions to the ISO/IEC C standard library.
  Source code: c0xfstat.c, c0xfstat.h.
  — Not submitted yet.
• [html] Proposal to add file system inquiry functions to the ISO/IEC C standard library.
  Source code: c0xfilesys.c, c0xfilesys.h.
  — Not submitted yet.
• [html] Proposal to add directory access functions to the ISO/IEC C standard library.
  Source code: c0xdir.c, c0xdir.h, c0xdirtest.c.
  — Not submitted yet.

Other Proposals

• [html] Proposal to add function aliases to the ISO/IEC C language.
  — Not submitted yet.
• [text] Proposal to add stack overflow handling to the ISO/IEC C standard library.
  — Not submitted yet.
• [text] Proposal to add a printf/scanf format specifier for function pointer values to the ISO/IEC C standard library.
  — Not submitted yet.
• [html] Proposal to add bit rotation operators and functions to the ISO/IEC C and C++ languages.
  — Not submitted yet.
• [html] Proposal to add a Unicode character datatype to the ISO/IEC C and C++ languages.
  — Incomplete.
• [text] My proposal to the ISO/IEC C language (C9X) committee for making the standard library thread-safe.
  — Not considered.
• [text] My suggestion to the ISO/IEC C language (C9X) and C++ language committees for a new null pointer constant (__null__).
  — Not considered.
• [text] My proposal to the ISO/IEC C language (C9X) committee requiring string literals to be const.
  — Not considered.
• [text] My proposal to the ISO/IEC C language (C9X) committee for a predefined __func__ identifier.
  The copy at the ANSI/C FTP site is here.
  — Accepted, now part of ISO/IEC C 9899:1999 (C99).
• [text] My proposal to the ISO/IEC C language (C9X) committee for new preprocessor macros defining implementation machine characteristics.
  The copy at the ANSI/C FTP site is here.
  — Rejected.
• [text] My proposal to the ISO/IEC C Language (C9X) committee for deprecating the auto keyword.
  The copy at the ANSI/C FTP site is no longer available.
  — Rejected.

These are letters, proposals, letters, and texts dealing with the Java language from Sun.

The following bugs and request for enhancements (RFE) were reported through the Java Developer Connection web site, which is at: developer.java.sun.com. (The links to the developer site require a registered user-ID.)

[4211070] | [html] 1999-02-11, 2001-12-30

Java should support const parameters (like C++) for code maintainence.
— Rejected.

[4459600] 2001-05-16

java -jar fails to run Main-Class if classname followed by whitespace.
— In progress.

[4489635] 2001-08-08

Access to outer object of non-static inner object other than 'this'.
— Rejected.

[4491255] 2001-08-13

java.io.PrintWriter: Add clearError() method.
— Fixed.

[4519021] 2001-10-24

Addition of "and", "or", and "not" keywords.
— Rejected.

[4582814] 2001-12-09

Javadoc should recognize HTML comment markers.
— Clarified.

[4638316] 2002-02-14

List final static variables (constants) separately from other variables.
— In progress.

[4649007] 2002-03-07, 2002-03-15

New class file attribute for compilation date/time; preprocessor macros?
— In progress.

[4679743] 2002-05-03

Additional Compressed Streams Requested
DeflaterInputStream, InflaterOutputStream
— Submitted source code, accepted in Java 1.6.

• [text]
  Proposal to the PNG graphics file format committee for adding a new 'tIML' time chunk.
  — Ignored.
• [text]
  Proposal to enhance the Unicode character encoding standard.
  — Ignored.

• [html]
  Physical Constraints on Time Travel
  A postulated spatial-temporal interaction exclusion principle (STIEP) which prevents time-traveling matter-energy from affecting its past time-line history, thus making the Grandfather paradox a physical impossibility.
• [html]
  A Sequence for Counting the Rationals
  A sequence that maps the naturals to the positive rationals.
  See also Farey sequence and Stern-Brocot tree.
• [code]
  Mapping the Naturals to the Rationals
  A Java program for denumerating a mapping between the natural numbers and the rational numbers.
  See also Farey sequence and Stern-Brocot tree.
• [html]
  Extending the Real Numbers
  A semi-formal discussion about extending the real numbers.
  
• [image] | [image]
  Mapping the points between two spheres
  See also bijection and cardinality.
• [html]
  The Infinite Number of Monkeys conjecture.
  A discussion of chance, probability, and a very big waste of time.
  See also Infinite Monkey Theorem.
• [html]
  My solution to Epimenide's paradox, also known as the Liar's paradox.
  See also Epimenides paradox and Liar paradox.
• [html] [text]
  Comments on the Biblical value of pi.
  See also History of numerical approximations of pi and Rabbi Nehemiah.

• [text]
  Letter I sent to Jerry Pournelle about the demise of Byte magazine in June 1998.
  See the story here.
  (Byte magazine has since then been revived, and can be see online at www.byte.com.)
• [text]
  Letter I sent to Joe Bob Briggs and his response.
• [text]
  Letter I sent to the Skeptical Inquirer magazine.

• [html]
  A list of commonly misspelled words.
• [html]
  The Dragon Warrior list.

• [news] comp.std.c
  Newgroup for the ISO C language standard.
• [news] comp.std.c++
  Newsgroup for the ISO C++ language standard.
• [news] comp.lang.c.moderated
  Moderated discussion newgroup for the C language.
• [news] comp.lang.c++.moderated
  Moderated discussion newgroup for the C++ language.
• [www] [www]
  Directory of ISO/IEC C Language (C9x) documents.
• [www] Directory of ISO/IEC C Language (C9X) proposed committee drafts, Dec 1997.
  Note: These are very long, over 1 MB in size.
• [html] ISO/IEC C Language (C9X) proposed committee draft, Nov 1997.
  Note: This is very long, about 1,281 KB in size.
• [text] ISO/IEC C Language (C9X) committee guidelines for new proposals.
  The copy at the ANSI/C FTP site is here.

My source code page is at http://david.tribble.com/src/src.html.

My home page is at http://david.tribble.com.
Send me email at david@tribble.com.