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Date: Sun, 26 Aug 2012 18:55:52 -0700
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Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] [VOTE]Call for voting: support use list in foreach
From: rasmus@lerdorf.com (Rasmus Lerdorf)

On 08/26/2012 06:48 PM, Lars Strojny wrote:
> Hi Gwynne,
> 
> Am 27.08.2012 um 03:39 schrieb Gwynne Raskind <gwynne@darkrainfall.org>:
> 
>> (And
>> a side note on that, the requirement of C89 standard compliance in PHP
>> has less and less advantage these days, and handicaps those few
>> language features in the later flavors of C (C99, gnu99, Clang C,
>> etc.) which -could- lessen the current unreadability of the code.)
> 
> OT but because I stumbled upon that some time ago: what was the original reason to enforce C89 and what would be needed to allow a modern standard?

Main reason was the lack of compiler support on some platforms. C89 was
the lowest common denominator that gave us the widest possible platform
support.

And we aren't just C89 anymore actually. We still try to stick to it
when possible, but for example in the intl extension you will find C++
and it won't build without it. The idea there is that any small embedded
platform that may still only have C89 support is unlikely to link
against the massive ICU library.

But we may be at the point where even tiny embedded platforms have
better compiler support and we don't need to stick to C89 anymore.

-Rasmus