[flatfinger]

I don't know if you saw my question right below, since I guess I replied to the wrong post, but I'd be really interested to know how you view the purpose of the Standard. For years, the language has been caught in a catch-22 where the authors of the Standard have seen no need to have it recognize constructs that compilers have, almost unanimously, processed usefully for years without being required to do so, but some compiler maintainers interpret the failure to mandate such constructs as deprecation.

I would like to see the Standard either rewritten in such a way as to actually define (sometimes as optional features) everything necessary to make an implementation suitable for a wide range of tasks, or else expressly state that, e.g. "There are some circumstances where the behavior of some action would documented by parts of the Standard, the documentation of the implementation and execution environment, or other materials, but some other portions of the Standard would characterize those actions as invoking Undefined Behavior. This Standard expressly waives jurisdiction in such cases so as to allow implementations designed for a variety of purposes to process them in whatever fashion would best suit those purposes."

What would you think about including something like those last two sentences in the Standard, so as to help clarify its intention?