This is an unofficial snapshot of the ISO/IEC JTC1 SC22 WG21 Core Issues List revision 114a. See http://www.open-std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg21/ for the official list.

2024-04-18

223. The meaning of deprecation

Section: Clause Annex D  [depr]     Status: CD3     Submitter: Mike Miller     Date: 19 Apr 2000

[Moved to DR at the April, 2013 meeting.]

During the discussion of issues 167 and 174, it became apparent that there was no consensus on the meaning of deprecation. Some thought that deprecating a feature reflected an intent to remove it from the language. Others viewed it more as an encouragement to programmers not to use certain constructs, even though they might be supported in perpetuity.

There is a formal-sounding definition of deprecation in Annex Clause Annex D [depr] paragraph 2:

deprecated is defined as: Normative for the current edition of the Standard, but not guaranteed to be part of the Standard in future revisions.
However, this definition would appear to say that any non-deprecated feature is "guaranteed to be part of the Standard in future revisions." It's not clear that that implication was intended, so this definition may need to be amended.

This issue is intended to provide an avenue for discussing and resolving those questions, after which the original issues may be reopened if that is deemed desirable.

Proposed resolution (August, 2012):

Change Clause Annex D [depr] paragraph 2 as follows:

These are deprecated features, where deprecated is defined as: Normative for the current edition of the Standard, but not guaranteed to be part of the Standard in having been identified as a candidate for removal from future revisions.