[PRL] safe c project for beginners?

[Joe Marshall]

On Wed, Nov 24, 2010 at 12:31 PM, Jed Davis <jld at ccs.neu.edu> wrote:
> On Fri, Nov 19, 2010 at 11:47:56AM -0800, Joe Marshall wrote:
>> I had to laugh when I saw `C' juxtaposed with the word `safe'
>> in the subject line.
>
> I can't say that was quite my reaction when I saw "C" juxtaposed with the
> word "safe" in the PLDI'09 proceedings, in the paper title
> _Implementation of the memory-safe full ANSI-C compiler_
> ( http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1542505 )
> ( One-line summary: for all the nasal demons in ANSI C, forbid them.)

This seems to be an example of following the letter of the law rather
than the spirit.  From the abstract:
  `` This compiler lets programmers easily make their programs safe
without heavy rewriting or porting of their code. It also supports
many of the "dirty tricks" commonly used in many existing C programs,
which do not strictly conform to the standard specification.''

`C' without the `dirty tricks' is barely worthy of the name.  (Not
that there should be any pride in that.)

-- 
~jrm