Comment by susam | Hacker News Reader

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Comment by susam | Hacker News Reader

I usually like to keep copies of the C standards drafts with me. In case anyone is interested, here are the links:

In case, someone is interested here are the various C standards drafts:

* C89/C90: http://port70.net/~nsz/c/c89/c89-draft.html

* C99 (N1256): http://www.open-std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg14/www/docs/n1256.pdf

* C11 (N1570): http://www.open-std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg14/www/docs/n1570.pdf

* C17/C18 (N2176): https://web.archive.org/web/20181230041359if_/http://www.ope...

Also, here is a nice Stack Overflow answer with links to C and C++ standards documents:

* https://stackoverflow.com/a/83763/303363

This answer usually gets updated as new revisions of the standards appear.

I have C74 manual. char was ASCII character occupying lower 7 bit of a signed 2's complement 8-bit number, int was signed 2's complement 16-bit number, no unsigned integers.

I wish the WG14 would publish the TeX sources for the latest working draft. None of the pdf-to-html generators work well, and as a result the most up to date version you can conveniently view in your browser is C99.

I don't understand, why are the PDF documents specifying the C/C++ standards being sold for $$$ when I believe I was able to find them on the respective WG website?

The finalized and approved standard costs money, but being an open standard (meaning anyone can contribute), the drafts are available for all.

As for why the finalized versions cost money when the final draft is virtually identical all the time? I honestly don’t know.

Might be just good ol' market segmentation - a company with the money to spend on a spec isn't likely to settle for a draft, but the average random dev doesn't care much about the differences.

Right, good point, all you get from the WG website is the working draft, which, as you pointed out, is almost always virtually identical to the published one that costs $$$.

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