http://invisible-island.net/ansification/
Copyright © 2014,2015 by Thomas E. Dickey

Comments about the term ANSI-fication

Definitions

Here are suggested definitions:

an·si·fy (an′-ze-fī′)

v. an·si·fied, an·si·fy·ing, an·si·fies
v.tr.

1. To convert or transform into one of the ANSI-standardized formats.
   The ANSI C computer language is generally assumed by context.
   ANSI published many standards.
2. To convert or transform C programs from K&R syntax to ANSI prototypes.

v.intr.

1. To become a standard (ANSI) C program; use function prototypes and other syntax defined in ANSI C.
2. To exploit features of ANSI C useful for compiler checks, including function prototypes, the const keyword, token concatenation with the preprocessor.

an·si·fi·ca·tion (an′-ze-fĭ-kā′shən)

n.

1. Acquisition or methodical use of ANSI-standard syntax, as of C computer programs or terminal control sequences.
2. The condition of being ansified.
3. A set of programs which has been ansified.

Referring to C programs

I did not coin this term, but found it most appropriate for describing the conversion from K&R C to ANSI C. It is not found in the so-called jargon file; the closest term “ANSI” is helpful only for general background.

The work that I did for XFree86 (referring to email) started in May 1998 (see notes for patch #77). XFree86 3.Ni (October 6, 1998) included these items

1884. Cleanup Xlibint.h, which significantly reduces the level of compiler 
      warnings, and also cleanup XIE's error.h (#2007, Thomas Dickey). 
1883. Add support for built-in driver modes (#2006, Egbert Eich). 
1882. Ansify and remove gcc warnings for imake, makedepend, lndir, makestrs, 
      makekeys and mkg3states) (#2005, Matthieu Herrb). 

Referring again to my email, I see that a few people used the term before I picked it up and reused it. For instance,

• In January 1996, Paul Fox used the term in referring to my work to convert vile to ANSI C, i.e., using prototypes and const.
• The term was used occasionally in regard to ansi2knr, e.g., ANSIfy during 1997 in the oleo changelog.

Referring to ANSI C seems to be the most common usage. It may have been first (or most widely) used relating to ansi2knr. Here are some additional mentions for that tool:

• Wanted: Lex/yacc or equiv for ANSI C, September 1991
  comp.compilers comment by John Levine said

  A quick look at the AT&T yacc parser suggests that it'd be easy enough to ansify it, probably without having to change yacc at all.

• 1995.01.19 18:23 "Re: Problem with Ultrix."
  TIFF and LibTiff mailing list comment by John Bradley said
  

  If that doesn't work, you might try snarfing the 'ansi2knr.c' program from the jpeg directory, and running it on all the .c and .h files in the tiff directory. It purports to de-ANSIfy C code, and it may do the trick. Again, I don't know how successful you'll be...

Here are some other mentions:

• ANSIfied for R6 , check-in comment in 1993 for xterm, referring to the replacement of bcopy with memmove.
  The availability of these functions was still an issue four years later (see xterm patch #57 note).
  I ANSIfied xterm during the following year, starting with patch #77.
• Re: ANSIfy cp/parser.c (9 Jan 2003).

Other uses of ANSIfication

• GNU M4 – ChangeLog
  There is more than one use of "ansify" to refer to converting the C source code using ansi2knr, but the earliest use of the term refers to setting compiler options to allow ANSI C programs to be compiled:

  1994-11-02  François Pinard  <pinard@iro.umontreal.ca>
  
          * src/freeze.c (produce_frozen_state): If the frozen file cannot
          be opened, return immediately after producing the error message.
          Reported by Andreas Schwab.
  
          * configure.in: Check for const only after having found possible
          ANSIfying compiler flags, this is of no use to check it before.
          Reported by Alexander Lehmann.
  

• ansify program first described in October 1995:

  Amy A. Lewis    alewis@email.unc.edu
  
  Mid-October '95
    Another utility, ansify, now compiles; it has not been tested at all, so
    it may not work even slightly.
    
    Ansify is a rather stupid program, all things considered, but the work on
    it does raise an interesting possibility for an enhanced fortune.  At
    present, the fortune databases contain x^Hy sequences for underline and
    special characters (and this can be extended to include bold, = x^Hx).
    Ansify is stupid because it doesn't use the proper tools, ie termcap or
    terminfo (hmmm ... since it works on files, that may not be so stupid);
    it appears that if that can be done, then a termcap/terminfo enhanced
    fortune could be produced, which would recognize the existence of ^H in
    a string and attempt to display using appropriate control sequences.
    This sort of modification would be of greater interest to casual users,
    I think, than even the bug fixes, and since it would not force changes
    in the storage of fortunes, it is eminently portable.  Consider this a
    'todo' announcement.
      
  

• Perl script ansify, by Steffen Beyer, dated 1995.

  print "\n'$self' $version\n\n";
  print "Converter for non-standard C comments ('// ...')\n";
  print "to ANSI C style comments ('/* ... */')\n\n";
  

• Perl script de-ansify, also by Steffen Beyer dated 1995.

  print "\n'$self' $version\n\n";
  print "Converter for ANSI C style comments ('/* ... */')\n";
  print "to non-standard C comments ('// ...')\n\n";
  

• ansify.c, part of GNU Fortran, dated 1997
• ansify.pl, a tool to help convert K&R C to ANSI C, dated 2005
• ansify.4th, part of 4tH (a Forth compiler), dated 2013

ANSI terminal controls

ANSI terminal controls, in particular for color have been around for a while. Applying the term "ANSIfy" to those seems to be recent.

• A command-line tool to convert images to ANSI escape codes.
  A Ruby script, starting in February 2012.

• Riot's ANSIfier
  A more recent JavaScript variation (October 2013). The combination of terms is odd, since they are not really related:

  This tool takes an image from the internet, converts it to 256 colour unicode ANSI art

  that is

  • 256 colour refers to the xterm 256-color feature,
  • unicode refers to UTF-8 encoding (no relation to color), and
  • ANSI refers to “ANSI color” aka ISO 6429 terminal control sequences. ANSI (and ISO and ECMA) did not define controls for 256-colors. That is as we say, implementation-dependent.