RTX-2000 processor PC/AT add-in card (any takers?)

Noel Chiappa jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu
Tue Apr 11 09:18:00 CDT 2017


    > From: Sean Conner

    > I really think it's for *this* reason (the handler() example) that C
    > doesn't allow nested functions.

I wouldn't be sure of that; I would tend to think that nested functions were
left out simply because they add complexity, and didn't add enough value to
outweigh that complexity. (In ~40 years of programming in C, I have never
missed them.)

C seems (well, until the standards committees got ahold of it) to have added
things as a demonstrated need was felt for them (see DMR's evolution of C
paper), and maybe they just never found a need for nested function
definitions?

I suspect that Ken probably knows; he's not (AFAIK) on the Unix History list
(TUHS), but several of his early co-workers (including Stephen Johnson, who
did PCC) are, and could relay a question to him, if it were asked over there
(if we really want to know).

	Noel


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