Re: NEWS file for next release

[Chris Gray]

Mark Wielaard wrote:

> Hi,
>
> On Thu, 2002-02-07 at 10:18, Chris Gray wrote:
>
> > Don't I recall reading in the index of some GNU manual (probably for
> > gcc):
> >   ANSI Trigraphs
> >     You don't want to know about this particular braindamage.
> >
> > :)
>
> Really funny. The gcc manual actually says that when it "explains" the
> -trigraphs option. That is all the documentation it gives! Argh.

I actually had to use them once.  I was compiling C code on an IBM
mainframe and doing most of my editing on a PC XT ... there was no
other way of getting source code converted from the DOS code page
to EBCDIC and back, and still be recognisable.

It's quite easy really - you just write { and } as ??< and ??>, [ ] as
??( ??), ~ as ??-, and so forth.  Unfortunately the sed scripts I used
to do this stuff ended up in the skip, along with the PC XT ... (the
mainframe is probably still running. ;>)  Anyway, I don't recall
anything about ::: - have you tried the I Ching?

Chris