Re: bison'd files don't compile under Microsoft VC++

[Paul Eggert]

> From: "David Gluss" <address@hidden>
> Date: Wed, 13 Feb 2002 17:13:49 -0800
> 
> Considering how trivial the patch is, and how pervasive the
> Microsoft C compiler is, I'm surprised that this seems such a hard
> problem.

The general problem is hard because there are a lot of C compilers out
there, the code is supposed to run on them all (and ideally on C++
compilers too), and we have no real way to test them.

We should not make a change just for Microsoft's compiler-of-the-week.
If we take that approach, we'll need to make a change "just for Sun",
another change "just for IBM", another change "just for older
Microsoft compilers", etc., and the code will turn into even worse
spaghetti than it is.

For more on this subject, please see the classic paper "ifdef
Considered Harmful" by Spencer and Collyer.