Thanks for taking the time to respond, compilers are always interesting to learn about! Point 7 was (finally!) addressed by C11. Points 6, 8, 9, 10, & 11 are

Thanks for taking the time to respond, compilers are always interesting to learn about! Point 7 was (finally!) addressed by C11. Points 6, 8, 9, 10, & 11 are all good ones that hadn't occurred to me. It seems like points 1, 4, & 5 could be worked around, but I can see where the added complexity would be unwelcome. On the whole, I can see why you made the decision you did. However, I don't buy points 2 (exception handling) and 3 (type support). Certainly C doesn't have these things built in, but appropriate code transformations seem to suffice in practice. For example, the CHICKEN Scheme to C compiler employs continuation-passing style [1] and Embeddable Common Lisp [2] manages to compile to C without (to my knowledge) breaking either its type system or its condition and restart [3] system. [1] https://wiki.call-cc.org/chicken-compilation-process https://wiki.call-cc.org/chicken-compilation-process [2] https://www.cliki.net/ECL https://www.cliki.net/ECL [3] http://www.gigamonkeys.com/book/beyond-exception-handling-conditions-and-restarts.html http://www.gigamonkeys.com/book/beyond-exception-handling-co...