Re:C's Flexible Integer Sizes Were Not a Design Mistake
by jstimpfle on Sunday September 27, 2026 @02:00PM
(#49869109)
I don't know about you but I need zero POSIX to write C on Windows. Not even much of the (mostly bad) C standard library. I use snprintf for convenience (but I don't have to), and memcpy, that's about it.
And many projects properly abstract their OS layer so they aren't tied to POSIX.
Maybe Unix is tied to C, but C isn't tied to Unix.
Re:C's Flexible Integer Sizes Were Not a Design Mistake
by pjmlp on Monday September 28, 2026 @02:46AM
(#49874422)
You failed to read this sentence until the end,
> UNIX/POSIX is for all practical purposes the runtime most C applications rely on, there are naturally some exceptions like free-standing or Windows (which eventually gave up and add to start improving its support).
Re:C's Flexible Integer Sizes Were Not a Design Mistake
by jstimpfle on Monday September 28, 2026 @05:20AM
(#49875443)
Point is that C isn't tied to POSIX. It's just not. Of course there are apps created on e.g. Linux, those sometimes get ported by relying on standardized "POSIX" platform. But that's not how you have to program, and it isn't a great way to program. And it isn't a sufficient platform to do anything useful.
C was pretty much ignored on 8 bit home computers, outside some toy compilers for CP/M.
In the 16 bit days, it was yet another language alongside BASIC compilers, Pascal, Modula-2, Assembly.
C is so tied to UNIX, that POSIX had to be created so that any non-UNIX operating system could provide a cozy home for their C compilers.
UNIX/POSIX is for all practical purposes the runtime most C applications rely on, there are naturally some exceptions like free-standing or Windows (which eventually gave up and add to start improving its support).
It is only due to historical accident that Microsoft gave up on Xenix, instead of replacing their MS-DOS efforts.