Whitespace!
Historic times, these are.
I don't have time to read the patent in full, but it looks like what they are doing is using whitespace to encode proprietary keywords in such a way that non-Microsoft compilers will interpret these keywords as whitespace and ignore them. Ostensibly, this is to maintain compatibility between "C++" programs using Microsoft proprietary extensions, and existing standards-compliant compilers.
I could be wrong -- like I said, I don't have time to parse through all that right now. But it's certainly not a "patent on whitespace."
Code://try //{ if (a) do { f( b); } while(1); else do { f(!b); } while(1); //}
Yeah I read it the same way as brewbuck.
Thank god they have patented this, otherwise it will spread.
C programming resources:
GNU C Function and Macro Index -- glibc reference manual
The C Book -- nice online learner guide
Current ISO draft standard
CCAN -- new CPAN like open source library repository
3 (different) GNU debugger tutorials: #1 -- #2 -- #3
cpwiki -- our wiki on sourceforge
Certainly not a new idea though. Look around and you'll find programs that compile in both C++ and whitespace for example.
I copied it from the last program in which I passed a parameter, which would have been pre-1989 I guess. - esbo
It's just another frivolous patent. It wouldn't hold up in court, but then it'd cost anyone who challenged it million of dollars just to get to court. Someone needs to get 50000 companies to simultaneously sue MS in a litigation version of a denial of service attack.
Last edited by abachler; 09-25-2009 at 11:57 PM.