2.1 vs. 2.2

[Tim Peters]

[Roy Smith]
> ISO certification is a wonderful thing.  It lets people who worry about
> that sort of stuff check off the "ISO certification" checkbox and
> be happy.

Which is why it's rare to see a thing go thru the expense of ISO
standardization unless vendors stand to make more money back by selling to
the "ISO certification checkbox" crowd; or unless that crowd has been so
burned by gratuitous variations in a thing that it's worth the expense to
them to get an ISO checkbox to beat their vendors over the head with
(although, in the case of languages, they're likely to find that the
eventual standard is carefully worded to allow all variations that already
exist).

> Other than that, it's not clear it has any value.

Oh, there's real value in having a precise standard -- even one so
weasel-worded as to allow getting away with anything.  Last I looked, the
Fortran 77 standard didn't guarantee anything about

     I = 3

because nothing in the standard required a conforming processor to supply
integers as large as 3 <wink>.