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arXiv:2201.07845cs.OS

How ISO C became unusable for operating systems development

Victor Yodaiken

Abstract

The C programming language was developed in the 1970s as a fairly unconventional systems and operating systems development tool, but has, through the course of the ISO Standards process, added many attributes of more conventional programming languages and become less suitable for operating systems development. Operating system programming continues to be done in non-ISO dialects of C. The differences provide a glimpse of operating system requirements for programming languages.

arXiv comments
PLOS '21: Proceedings of the 11th Workshop on Programming Languages and Operating Systems October 2021
Journal reference
DOI
doi:10.1145/3477113.3487274
Subjects
cs.OSOperating Systems cs.PLProgramming Languages

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Linked by 2 identifiable commenters in 2 comments across 2 threads, from Feb 2022 to Nov 2022. Found in 1 HN submission from Jan 2022 to Jan 2022. Open submission discussions.

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Discussed in comments2 threads

  1. Undefined Isn’t Unpredictable 1 comment

    • For more, see https://www.complang.tuwien.ac.at/kps2015/proceedings/KPS_20... (clearly distinguishing C* which corresponds to the hardware from "C" which is the subset of C* that excludes all undefined behaviour) and https://arxiv.org/pdf/2201.07845.pdf "How ISO C became…

      Mathnerd314View on HNParent context

  2. Moving the Linux Kernel to Modern C 1 comment

    • > but there was an article on here not too long ago that was arguing that nearly all os development required old C because choices of the committee would break use cases required under the guise of undefined behavior. I would guess that you're referring to either "How ISO C…

      aw1621107View on HNParent context

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