This is the answer from HP's Keith K. Munsch in the cxx-dev mailing list (on 18 Feb 1999) to a detail which has puzzled us:
> I installed PHSS_16586 and notice when checking the install > for errors there was a discrepancy between what is on the > machine and what the patch description says should be > installed. > > >From the Patch Files section of PHSS_18586: > /opt/langtools/lib/nls/msg/C/ucomp.cat.tmp > /opt/langtools/lbin/ucomp.tmp > > My machine contains: > /opt/langtools/lib/nls/msg/C/ucomp.cat > /opt/langtools/lbin/ucomp > > Is there a problem with this installation? No. The files /opt/langtools/lbin/ucomp and /opt/langtools/lib/nls/msg/C/ucomp.cat are shared by all compilers (CC, cc, aCC,...) and we always want the latest version installed on a customers system. For this reason, patches for all compilers ship the "tmp" versions of these files, then in the patch "postinstall" script we do a version check to see if the "ucomp" on the system is older than the one in the patch. If it is, the patch "postinstall" script updates the shared "ucomp". If the "ucomp" on the system is newer (maybe you just installed a C patch that has a more recent version) the "tmp" versions are just deleted from your system and aCC uses the newer versions already installed.