In article <1018@zinn.MV.COM> mjv@objects.mv.com (Michael J. Vilot) writes:

>Steve Clamage did an independent iostreams implementation for TauMetric.  He is
>helping X3J16 define an I/O library that is implementable.  The standard I/O
>library is based on iostreams (i.e. AT&T 2.0), with suggestions for simplifying
>it from Jerry Schwarz, Doug Lea, and others.  One comment we received last week
>helped us remove the Unix-specific file descriptors (as `int's), so a vendor
>trying to provide a C++ implementation on an IBM 370 system could do so.

I would hope that the X3J16 committee would be very careful in working
with the standard library to remain 100% POSIX compatible.  The ANSI C
committee worked in close coordination with the POSIX.1 committee to
avoid overlapping work and to ensure that the two standards didn't
conflict unnecessarily.  A rapporteur between X3J16 and POSIX.1 would
be very worthwhile if there isn't one already.

It is worth noting that POSIX is (and has been) fully implementable
on a very wide variety of systems including IBM 370 series and
CRAYs and more conventional ones so being POSIX compatible enhances
portability to a variety of architectures rather than restricting
it.

Ran Atkinson
randall@Virginia.EDU