There was a time when buying the Ansi C standard cost over $200 but you could get Herb Schildt’s “Annotated Ansi C Standard” for $20, which some said reflected the value he added to the process.
There was a time when buying the Ansi C standard cost over $200 but you could get Herb Schildt’s “Annotated Ansi C Standard” for $20, which some said reflected the value he added to the process.
Buying the ANSI C standard still costs about $300. Same for C++.
https://webstore.ansi.org/standards/iso/isoiec98992024?sourc...
Nobody does it. gcc/clang implement it from the "drafts", which are published online due to the need to discuss them prior to standardization.
It used to be 18 dollars in the ANSI webstore for quite some time.
Also, you can look at smaller European countries putting their national cover page on it, and selling it cheaper. It’s the same standard, in English.
The C standard is only a bit cheaper at the Lithuanian agency: https://eshop.lsd.lt/public#!/product/info/0a640332-9273-166...
Sometimes it‘s much cheaper: the Germans sell IEC 62443-4-2 for 400 Euros, the Estonians for 40 Euros:
https://www.dinmedia.de/de/norm/csa-iec-62443-4-2/331021994?...
https://www.evs.ee/et/evs-en-iec-62443-4-2-2019
Strictly speaking it's the ISO C standard. ISO issues each new edition of the standard, and ANSI adopts it.
This was reversed for the first standard, which ANSI published in 1989; ISO adopted it, with editorial changes, in 1990. The term "ANSI C" usually (not entirely correctly) refers to the 1989 standard. If you want to refer to a particular version, it's best to refer to "ISO C" and the date (1990, 1999, 2011, 2023).
The money you pay for a copy of the standard doesn't go to the people who do the work of writing it, who are either volunteers or paid by their employers.
Somewhere along the line, especially with Internet in late 00s people understand the term Open to be the same as Free. When in reality they are not.
But now it is all too late to debate and fix this.