twitter: comp.lang.c - 25 new messages in 11 topics

comp.lang.c
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.c?hl=en

comp.lang.c@googlegroups.com

Today's topics:

==============================================================================
TOPIC: dynamic buffer allocation at char buf[1]
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.c/t/969816eb2d0fdbaf?hl=en
==============================================================================

== 1 of 2 ==
Date: Sun, Apr 11 2010 11:59 pm
From: Seebs

On 2010-04-12, Michael Foukarakis <electricdelta@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Apr 11, 6:54 pm, Willem <wil...@turtle.stack.nl> wrote:
>> Along with multi-character character initializers.
>> For example: unsigned long exif_tag = 'EXIF';

> Posting that as if it were a piece of code actually encountered in the
> wild and considered half-useful made me shed a little tear.

It was an idiom very popular on pre-OS X macs, where it was used to
create 32-bit values for use as "creator" and "type" tags.

Not a big fan, myself, but it was a plausible idiom, because it allowed
you to compare the 32-bit values rather than iterating through strings.

-s
--
Copyright 2010, all wrongs reversed. Peter Seebach / usenet-nospam@seebs.net
http://www.seebs.net/log/ <-- lawsuits, religion, and funny pictures
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_Game_(Scientology) <-- get educated!

== 2 of 2 ==
Date: Mon, Apr 12 2010 3:54 am
From: pacman@kosh.dhis.org (Alan Curry)

In article <slrnhs5hfh.e5q.usenet-nospam@guild.seebs.net>,
Seebs <usenet-nospam@seebs.net> wrote:
|On 2010-04-12, Michael Foukarakis <electricdelta@gmail.com> wrote:
|> On Apr 11, 6:54 pm, Willem <wil...@turtle.stack.nl> wrote:
|>> Along with multi-character character initializers.
|>> For example: unsigned long exif_tag = 'EXIF';
|
|> Posting that as if it were a piece of code actually encountered in the
|> wild and considered half-useful made me shed a little tear.
|
|It was an idiom very popular on pre-OS X macs, where it was used to
|create 32-bit values for use as "creator" and "type" tags.

I suppose the byte order question didn't bother anyone, because everyone
knew Macs would forever be big-endian.

--
Alan Curry

==============================================================================
TOPIC: OT: Linux problem
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.c/t/b27bbc7383c9d155?hl=en
==============================================================================

== 1 of 1 ==
Date: Mon, Apr 12 2010 12:28 am
From: Nick Keighley

On 29 Mar, 13:45, jacob navia <ja...@nospam.org> wrote:
> Rob Kendrick a écrit :
> > On Mon, 29 Mar 2010 13:08:23 +0200
> > jacob navia <ja...@nospam.org> wrote:

[program crashed on customer site- suggestion: use gdb]

> >> No I can't. There is no debugger. I just want something that will
> >> write a stack trace and register dump to a log file at the customer
> >> site...
>
> > If it's a matter of not wanting to explain to the customer how to drive
> > GDB over the 'phone,

this kind of blows Richard <always use a debugger>'s argument out of
the water. This is one of the classic instances where a decent log
file would be massivly helpful.

I really do feel for you, no matter how much you testing you do the
real world can ambush you.

This is also why I leave the assert()s in...

can the customer email the core dump to you?

> Customer (C): Your DAMMED programmed crashed AGAIN you MORON!
> Jacob(j): Gulp... Sorry Sir, I can't explain it, I tested and tested.
> Please can you open a command line?
> C: A what?
> j: A command line. You go into Applications, then Utilities and then
> command line.
> C: I can't see any "applications" I just see: "login".
> j: Ah of course. Then you just write: root/password.
> C: Now I see a black screen with a pound sign.
> j: OK. Now you type:
> cd /home/database/applications/start
> C: It says -bash: /home is a directory
> j: What? Ah OK. Do not put a space between the /home and the
> directory word.
>
> etc... etc... etc
>
> Imagine explaining gdb to them.

:-)

I've done things like this. Fun isn't it?

> Besides, there is no core file

so enable core files

> and gdb would be completely useless after the program
> has exited.
>
> > then perhaps valgrind would be a better option?
> > (As it essentially requires no human to drive, and just dumps out a
> > report.)
>
> But it would affect performance isn't it?
>
> I mean, my application doesn't crash all the time.

richard <no-name>: what would you do?

==============================================================================
TOPIC: C - gets() function implementation help
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.c/t/7bd0bc765a2e9603?hl=en
==============================================================================

== 1 of 6 ==
Date: Mon, Apr 12 2010 12:38 am
From: Nick Keighley

On 11 Apr, 21:52, Keith Thompson <ks...@mib.org> wrote:
> Malcolm McLean <malcolm.mcle...@btinternet.com> writes:
> > On 11 Apr, 21:13, Barry Schwarz <schwa...@dqel.com> wrote:
> >> On Sun, 11 Apr 2010 19:15:15 -0000, "bartc" <ba...@freeuk.com> wrote:
>
> >> So now my exhaustive attack no longer has to deal with any password
> >> length other than 7. Considering only letters and numbers, a
> >> 6-character password can contain any of pow(6,36) possible values.
> >> Similar values for the longer ones. By restricting my effort, you
> >> have reduced my task by 99.988%, from 2.28556E34 to 2.65173E30.
> >> (Calculation performed using Excel 2003 with default options.) A
> >> ten-thousand fold reduction in effort meets my definition of easier.
>
> > Not really. 10^34 is the same as 10^30, if you can only submit one
> > password to the system at once. If you can try a billion passwords a
> > second, it's 10^21 versus 10^25 seconds. You'll be just as dead before
> > the shorter time is up than before the longer one is.
>
> And if I have any *other* information, it's quite possible that
> knowing your password is 7 characters makes an otherwise infeasible
> attack feasible.
>
> Consider a system that requires all passwords to be exactly 7
> characters, no more, no less. Is such a system more or less secure
> than a system that allows longer passwords?

I remember someone mentioning a few facts about his cashcard pin
(things like no repeated numbers, no 3's or 4's and so on). After a
few of those I told him I could guess his pin in about 40 tries. He
looked terrified.

== 2 of 6 ==
Date: Mon, Apr 12 2010 1:07 am
From: Nick Keighley

On 12 Apr, 06:08, brian <bec...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Apr 12, 5:27 am, Nick Keighley <nick_keighley_nos...@hotmail.com>
> wrote:
> > On 10 Apr, 16:41, brian <bec...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > > On Apr 10, 7:12 pm, Seebs <usenet-nos...@seebs.net> wrote:
> > > > On 2010-04-10, brian <bec...@gmail.com> wrote:

> > > > > I am a newbie in C programming.
> > > > > I have to make an implementation of gets() function from stdio.h, but
> > > > > I am not sure where to start.
> > > > > Please advice, any help is welcome.

<snip>
[it's good usenet practice to snip stuff you aren't responding to]

> > > > Describe what gets() does. What parameters does it take? What does
> > > > it return? What does it *DO*?

<snip>

> > > For example a standard description of gets() function says:
> > > The gets() function shall read bytes from the standard input stream,
> > > stdin, into the array pointed to by s, until a <newline> is read or an
> > > end-of-file condition is encountered. Any <newline> shall be discarded
> > > and a null byte shall be placed immediately after the last byte read
> > > into the array.

<snip>

> So what I was advised, is to use a loop and a getc() function from
> stdio.h, some also advised to use pointers.
> How would that work exactly?

it's getting very hard to answer this without actually writing the
program for you! Look up getc() (google will find you a page that
describes getc()). ignore the end-of-file stuff for the moment. How
are you going to test for a <newline>?

So in pseudo code:-

LOOP UNTIL newline
read character
stuff it in array

terminate string with nul character

Then convert each line into C. What C constructs repeatedly loops
while some condition is true?

You might find it use easier to arrays rather than pointers (some
pedant will point out that in this case they are the same thing- well
yes but they don't *look* the same)

good luck, happy programming!

--
"NaN is a floating point number"
(Edward Nilges)

== 3 of 6 ==
Date: Mon, Apr 12 2010 1:10 am
From: Nick Keighley

On 11 Apr, 21:49, Richard Heathfield <r...@see.sig.invalid> wrote:
> brian wrote:
> > Hi everyone,
>
> > I am a newbie in C programming.
> > I have to make an implementation of gets() function from stdio.h, but
> > I am not sure where to start.
>
> Start off by finding out why gets() is an open invitation to adversaries
> to stomp all over your system.
>
> Once you know that, implementing gets() is easy - Just Say No.

which may not get him a passing mark in his course

== 4 of 6 ==
Date: Mon, Apr 12 2010 1:32 am
From: Richard Heathfield

Nick Keighley wrote:
<snip>

> I remember someone mentioning a few facts about his cashcard pin
> (things like no repeated numbers, no 3's or 4's and so on). After a
> few of those I told him I could guess his pin in about 40 tries. He
> looked terrified.

For a four-digit PIN, there are 10,000 combinations. Simply eliminating
repeated numbers (i.e. no digit appears in the PIN more than once)
reduces the number to 5,040. Adding the constraint "no threes" reduces
the number to 3024. Keeping those two constraints in place, and adding
the constraint "no fours", we are down to 1680 combinations.

You said "after a few of those", so let's add some more constraints.

The PIN is a prime that is greater than its reverse (ABCD > DCBA). It
contains precisely two odd digits, and the sum of its digits is 8 (mod 11).

If he's okay with those constraints...

--
Richard Heathfield <http://www.cpax.org.uk>
Email: -http://www. +rjh@
"Usenet is a strange place" - dmr 29 July 1999
Sig line vacant - apply within

== 5 of 6 ==
Date: Mon, Apr 12 2010 1:33 am
From: Richard Heathfield

Nick Keighley wrote:
> On 11 Apr, 21:49, Richard Heathfield <r...@see.sig.invalid> wrote:
>> brian wrote:
>>> Hi everyone,
>>> I am a newbie in C programming.
>>> I have to make an implementation of gets() function from stdio.h, but
>>> I am not sure where to start.
>> Start off by finding out why gets() is an open invitation to adversaries
>> to stomp all over your system.
>>
>> Once you know that, implementing gets() is easy - Just Say No.
>
> which may not get him a passing mark in his course

If that's the case, the course isn't worth passing.

--
Richard Heathfield <http://www.cpax.org.uk>
Email: -http://www. +rjh@
"Usenet is a strange place" - dmr 29 July 1999
Sig line vacant - apply within

== 6 of 6 ==
Date: Mon, Apr 12 2010 2:58 am
From: "bartc"

"Keith Thompson" <kst-u@mib.org> wrote in message
news:lnochpvo46.fsf@nuthaus.mib.org...
> "bartc" <bartc@freeuk.com> writes:
>> "Barry Schwarz" <schwarzb@dqel.com> wrote in message
>> news:g904s5t7j11m616vh9ro8ulfsmpvdrvs7v@4ax.com...
> [...]
>>> Believe it or not, there are real security people who say that
>>> displaying those cute little asterisks is a bad idea. It allows any
>>> over-the-shoulder lurker to see how many characters are in your
>>> password, thus making attempts to hack the password easier.
>>
>> (Does it? What word am I thinking of at this minute? I'll give you a
>> clue: it's got 7 letters and not 6 or 8 or 9.
>
> Any outside knowledge about my password is too much.

I wasn't being too serious.

>> But maybe password input should allow extra, discarded, white space to
>> fix
>> that.)
>
> No thanks. What if a password actually contains whitespace?
>
> Incidentally, I once used a system that would echo a dot for each
> character of a password, but would echo a space for any spaces that
> were actually part of the password.

That is actually a tremendous help. It gives the 'shape' of a phrase and is
a method I used all the time to help solve crossword clues, where there are
multiple words. (Example: the clue hints at a book or film title, the answer
is (1,7,2,5) and the letters so far are - ------- -- i----. Simple! (If not,
see below...))

--
Bartc

a passage to india

==============================================================================
TOPIC: In the Matter of Herb Schildt: a Detailed Analysis of "C: The Complete
Nonsense"
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.c/t/caf17fab4e7d8530?hl=en
==============================================================================

== 1 of 3 ==
Date: Mon, Apr 12 2010 12:44 am
From: spinoza1111

On Apr 11, 6:12 pm, blm...@myrealbox.com <blm...@myrealbox.com> wrote:
> In article <slrnhs1d71.qt9.usenet-nos...@guild.seebs.net>,
>
> Seebs <usenet-nos...@seebs.net> wrote:
> > On 2010-04-10, blmblm myrealbox.com <blm...@myrealbox.com> wrote:
> > > In article <165bc196-c803-4a16-9099-da444354a...@x20g2000yqb.googlegroups.com>,
> > > rigs <rigor...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > >> On Apr 8, 5:23 am,spinoza1111<spinoza1...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> > >> > On Apr 7, 8:24 pm, blm...@myrealbox.com <blm...@myrealbox.com> wrote:
> > >> Who knew the Frankfurt School offered degrees in Internet Kookery?
>
> > > Say what? Often GIM[*]F, but not in this instance. ?
>
> > > [*] My.
>
> >http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frankfurt_School
>
> I wonder why I didn't find that myself. (Could Google somehow
> know that sometimes I criticize, however mildly, their GG
> archive-searching and Usenet-posting services?! Nah, sheer
> paranoia .... :-)? )
>
> > Accurate enough summary, I think. :P
>
> If you say so! I admit I found the first few paragraphs slow
> enough going that I bailed out, though I did recognize some names.
> Maybe I'll try again at some point. Apparently some of the
> enthusiasm I had for non-STEM subjects as an undergraduate has
> evaporated over the years. :-(

Pity. My own experience is that reading ability declines both in the
corporation and in those parts of universities (such as computer
science departments) which are dominated by the corporation.

I started studying "critical theory" after leaving Bell-Northern
Research and starting at Princeton, since I saw the structured
programming "revolution" destroyed even though it had two effects: it
introduced common decency into data processing, and increased
productivity.

I gave a paper on my findings for the first time in 1988.
>
> --
> B. L. Massingill
> ObDisclaimer: I don't speak for my employers; they return the favor.

== 2 of 3 ==
Date: Mon, Apr 12 2010 12:51 am
From: spinoza1111

On Apr 11, 11:05 am, Seebs <usenet-nos...@seebs.net> wrote:
> On 2010-04-11, Keith Thompson <ks...@mib.org> wrote:
>
> > rigs <rigor...@gmail.com> writes:
> >> Talk is cheap. The civil filing fee is US$322.
> >> Put up or shut up.
> > Yes, I'm sure that after 283 people have tauntedspinoza1111for his
> > empty threats of lawsuits, the 284th taunt will have better results.
>
> The difference being, that *particular* taunt comes from someone who
> has represented me in court in the past. :)
>
> ... Not that this difference will make Nilges suddenly actually do any
> of the things he threatens to do that would give him any kind of real
> exposure. My guess is that he's quite realistic enough to realize
> that any kind of actual lawsuit would leave him open to court orders
> to pay costs...

A lawsuit is only one of my options. Another has been started, and
this is to show that the article on Schildt in wikipedia is in
violation of wikipedia's policy on "biographies of living persons" in
such a way as to get its creators banned, since it was created to
trash Schildt. As its primary source, your NNPOV article puts you
under suspicion.

Another option would be to submit an outline to Apress for a book on
cyberbullying by chronological adults. In that book, you'd be
anonymous but in a major case study. It will make the case that far
from being a marginal deviance, cyberbullying is used by management to
enforce control.

But as it is, you need now to start studying my case with more
diligence. Based on your replies, you seem to think that this is some
sort of game. It is not. Having been cyber-stalked and bullied, the
best way for me to heal is to defend another for no compensation pro
bono publico, and establish that cyberstalking can be ended.

Why don't you just replace both CTCN-3 and CTCN-4 with apologies, or a
blank page if you're not man enough to admit your stalking Herb?
>
> -s
> --
> Copyright 2010, all wrongs reversed. Peter Seebach / usenet-nos...@seebs.nethttp://www.seebs.net/log/<-- lawsuits, religion, and funny pictureshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_Game_(Scientology) <-- get educated!

== 3 of 3 ==
Date: Mon, Apr 12 2010 2:01 am
From: blmblm@myrealbox.com

In article <slrnhs3uo6.8id.usenet-nospam@guild.seebs.net>,
Seebs <usenet-nospam@seebs.net> wrote:
> On 2010-04-11, blmblm myrealbox.com <blmblm@myrealbox.com> wrote:
> > But then, that's UNIX for you, right? Multiple different versions,
> > all *more or less* the same, but sometimes subtly different. :-)?
> > or maybe it's a :-(.
>
> I use Unix the same way I use C -- by primarily writing in the standardized
> land, such that I don't have to know whether something is GNU, BSD, or SysV.

And as with C it can be difficult to get right, and trying to learn
how things work by experiment only goes so far and is as likely as not
to produce non-portable results ....

> (It is no accident that my published book is on "portable shell scripting".)

I may need to acquire a copy of this book. :-)

> > That *is* a better term for how I understand things to work --
> > case is *preserved* in filenames, but ignored in deciding whether
> > two names refer to the same file (e.g., one can't have both a
> > "Foo" and a "foo" in the same directory). This can make things
> > interesting when one tries to copy files in bulk from a "real UNIX"
> > filesystem to an OS X filesystem.
>
> Yes, it can, which is one of the reasons they provide a case-sensitive
> alternative.

And very helpful that is, too.

> >> > I have no idea what "ironic" means here.
>
> >> It means "ha ha only serious". (See the Jargon file.)
>
> > In case it wasn't clear -- I wasn't asking what "ironic" means in
> > general (I know that!) but how it applies in this context. Does
> > that change your answer .... <shrug>
>
> That is exactly the question I was answering. I hate to take liberties,
> but I did simply take for granted that you knew the word "ironic", noticed
> that it didn't seem to apply to his posts, and wished to know how to
> understand it in this particular context.

Okay. Well, I guess I put two (my interpretation of your reply) and
two (my understanding of autism-related disorders) together and got,
um, five. Or six. Or something. Sorry about that.

How "ironic" applies in context is still a mystery to me, but --
whatever, maybe.

--
B. L. Massingill
ObDisclaimer: I don't speak for my employers; they return the favor.

==============================================================================
TOPIC: Buy Rocket Spanish
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.c/t/8bc6229ff96e9ba1?hl=en
==============================================================================

== 1 of 1 ==
Date: Mon, Apr 12 2010 1:01 am
From: 3ndy

Up to 70% off speak Spanish Fast
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http://indojobonline.com/rocket-spanish

Cheer :)

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http://tinyurl.com/7hou5t

==============================================================================
TOPIC: Son of Snarky Tirade: a response to Seebach's new CTCN: part 1
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.c/t/383e6d5a95dc3f75?hl=en
==============================================================================

== 1 of 5 ==
Date: Mon, Apr 12 2010 1:31 am
From: Nick Keighley

On 12 Apr, 06:20, spinoza1111 <spinoza1...@yahoo.com> wrote:

> [refuting Kennedy assination conspiracy theories (I couldn't parody this stuff)]
> Similarly, Seebach lies about the
> standard because it doesn't mandate int main(),

weeell,

"Hosted Environment
The function called at program startup is named main. [...] It can be
defined with no parameters
int main (void) { /*...*/ }
"

(and then goes on the discuss argv and argc).

There is no hint of void main (or any other return type other than
int). This may be open to interpretation (I don't think so, but other
people do) but that isn't lieing.

> it allows a hosted
> implementation to expect something in the stack after the termination
> of main().

Schildt isn't discussing standalone implementations.

<snip>

"The expression isn't unclear *at all* and only an expert could
actually
have doubts about it" - Dan Pop 2001-02-06

== 2 of 5 ==
Date: Mon, Apr 12 2010 2:01 am
From: blmblm@myrealbox.com

In article <a1d092b7-b812-4161-8e42-2b5f9f09b1c5@y14g2000yqm.googlegroups.com>,
spinoza1111 <spinoza1111@yahoo.com> wrote:
> This is my reply (part 1) to Peter Seebach's new edition of "C: the
> Complete Nonsense" at http://www.seebs.net/c/c_tcn4e.html. Further
> parts of my complete reply will be forthcoming.

[ snip ]

> 1. "The printf command does not send a newline, nor is the stream
> flushed. On many systems, doing this to the console would not display
> the prompt until some later point. (See Newlines and Output.)"
> The intent is clear as in understanding and truth. Herb is merely
> expressing his intention to allow, on the many systems where the
> printf works, the user to enter the data on the same line.
> In a profession in which the grave and senior deliver so many bugs,
> for example in which the pompous Keith Thompson of clc gravely
> approved your one-line, off by one strlen, your false perfection and
> useless beauty, a standard which you so signally fail to self-apply,
> creates bugs.
>
> Suppose Herb had been told by a user that the input as typed must
> appear on the same line. You'd assault his professionalism in a
> walkthrough based on the possibility that in some systems, omitting a
> newline in a printf might not "push" the data out. You'd be "right"
> but nothing would get accomplished.
> Of course, there is probably a way of doing this,

fflush(), I believe.

> but the non-
> obviousness is a flaw in C.
>
> It would be a bug in the runtime for it to wait to "print" until eof.
> It is contrary to the entire stream-of-characters io text model of C
> to "wait" until end of line. In other words, you trash a guy because
> of an error in C which you and others failed to fix in C99.
> "For that matter, the file was opened in text mode, not binary mode.
> In text mode, you may have to provide a newline at the end of your
> output; since it is permissible for an implementation to require this,
> you should always do it, especially in sample programs in a book
> purporting to teach C."
>
> In other words, the standard gave a plenary indulgence or get out of
> jail free card to buggy compilers owing to vendor greed. And you fell
> for it. Or did it.
>
> And your advice is wrong. Any number of programs need to print
> characters in a loop using printf in the loop, and delaying the
> newline until the loop is complete. To follow your advice, the
> programmer would have to allocate a buffer,

Not at all. As I understand it, what happens, and when, to the
characters written to an output stream with printf depends on the
program's environment. Output may be buffered *by the environment*
until the next newline is encountered, or until end of file is
reached, or until the environment's buffer is full. Programmers do
need to be aware that output may not actually appear right away,
and also that it may not appear at all unless/until the output
stream is flushed (perhaps by being closed), but what this has
to do with their doing their own buffering -- eh.

> and "buffer" creation is
> usually a sign of incompetence and a source of bugs.

[ snip ]

--
B. L. Massingill
ObDisclaimer: I don't speak for my employers; they return the favor.

== 3 of 5 ==
Date: Mon, Apr 12 2010 2:03 am
From: blmblm@myrealbox.com

In article <slrnhs4uqc.qlr.usenet-nospam@guild.seebs.net>,
Seebs <usenet-nospam@seebs.net> wrote:
> On 2010-04-12, Colonel Harlan Sanders <Harlan@kfc.com> wrote:
> > On Sun, 11 Apr 2010 17:38:07 -0700 (PDT), spinoza1111
> ><spinoza1111@yahoo.com> wrote:

[ snip ]

> Please put [NILGES] in subject lines when responding to him or threads
> about him so people can killfile them more easily,

As I understand it, Google's posting interface strips tags in square
brackets from subject lines, so your proposed fix here may not be as
effective as you might like. Just sayin'.

> and let's get back
> to talking about C. This has been about as amusing as it's going to
> get unless he actually sues, and since that won't happen, we're done
> here; this is now a sitcom in reruns, and there is No Point.

--
B. L. Massingill
ObDisclaimer: I don't speak for my employers; they return the favor.

== 4 of 5 ==
Date: Mon, Apr 12 2010 4:13 am
From: Ian Collins

On 04/12/10 05:21 PM, Seebs wrote:
> On 2010-04-12, Peter Nilsson<airia@acay.com.au> wrote:
>> Seebs<usenet-nos...@seebs.net> wrote:
>>> ... So far as I can tell, if people would just ignore
>>> him and let him be, ...
>
>> Well there's a stone from the glass house.
>
> I have him killfiled; I haven't yet got the tools to autokill any thread
> he starts, or anything.

Try Thunderbird.

--
Ian Collins

== 5 of 5 ==
Date: Mon, Apr 12 2010 6:07 am
From: J de Boyne Pollard

> > Similarly, Seebach lies about the standard
> > because it doesn't mandate int main(),
>
> weeell,
>
> "Hosted Environment
> The function called at program startup is named main. [...] It can be
> defined with no parameters
> int main (void) { /*...*/ }
> "
>
> (and then goes on the discuss argv and argc).
>
> There is no hint of void main (or any other return type
> other than int).

Actually, there is. You've stopped reading one third of
the way through a sentence. Read all of the way to the
end of that sentence. Then read for a few more sections
beyond that point, as well.

==============================================================================
TOPIC: Endless arguing
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.c/t/a99361379a499175?hl=en
==============================================================================

== 1 of 2 ==
Date: Mon, Apr 12 2010 1:46 am
From: James Harris

On 12 Apr, 05:00, "Morris Keesan" <mkee...@post.harvard.edu> wrote:

> Quoting someone on a BBC radio programme from a few weeks ago:
>
> -"Remember, if you choose to argue with an idiot, the best possible
> outcome is that you've won an argument with an idiot."-

There's some truth in the quote but there are other factors to
consider.

For example, if none of the careful deceits and misrepresentations are
challenged someone reading the words - either now or at some time in
the future - may believe them to be true.

James

== 2 of 2 ==
Date: Mon, Apr 12 2010 5:14 am
From: "osmium"

James Harris wrote:

> On 12 Apr, 05:00, "Morris Keesan" <mkee...@post.harvard.edu> wrote:
>
>> Quoting someone on a BBC radio programme from a few weeks ago:
>>
>> -"Remember, if you choose to argue with an idiot, the best possible
>> outcome is that you've won an argument with an idiot."-
>
> There's some truth in the quote but there are other factors to
> consider.
>
> For example, if none of the careful deceits and misrepresentations are
> challenged someone reading the words - either now or at some time in
> the future - may believe them to be true.

No single human could possibly have any effect on the amount of faulty
information that exists. You might as well decide to stop the ocean tides.

==============================================================================
TOPIC: C the complete nonsense
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.c/t/fee08dfa5e4cbaaa?hl=en
==============================================================================

== 1 of 1 ==
Date: Mon, Apr 12 2010 1:51 am
From: Nick Keighley

On 11 Apr, 22:24, Malcolm McLean <malcolm.mcle...@btinternet.com>
wrote:
> On 11 Apr, 21:49, Keith Thompson <ks...@mib.org> wrote:> Malcolm McLean <malcolm.mcle...@btinternet.com> writes:

> > > Nearly 400 posts to this thread later, and we still haven't quite
> > > established that Seebs wrote a spurious first entry to his errata.
> > > People are like that.
>
> > We haven't estblished it because there are legitimate differences of
> > opinion on the point, something I don't recall seeing you acknowledge.
>
> I don't think "In general", as the opening phrase of a sentence, can
> ever mean "always".

I still think it's a pretty misleading statement (schildt's that is).
It pretty well implies that non-2s complement systems can be ignored,
or at least that this is an important and interesting point. A more
insteresting point is that it ***hardly ever matters how numbers are
represented***

> If we can't even agree on that, there's not much
> point going on to erratum number two, where the issues are a bit more
> subtle.

I find it amazing you weren't able to read such a short, clear (!)
document right to the end.

==============================================================================
TOPIC: OT (was Re: Efficency and the standard library)
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.c/t/ad9fea19f2f7dd61?hl=en
==============================================================================

== 1 of 1 ==
Date: Mon, Apr 12 2010 2:02 am
From: blmblm@myrealbox.com

In article <87ochp6ht8.fsf@temporary-address.org.uk>,
Nick <3-nospam@temporary-address.org.uk> wrote:
> blmblm@myrealbox.com <blmblm@myrealbox.com> writes:
>
> > I don't think so. For all I know they [alt.usage.english] might
> > welcome you and agree with your assessment of your writing skills.
>
> Argh. I'm just working through things having come back from a week away
> and I take this to mean that you've taken this plague, that has pretty
> well destroyed comp.lang.c and deliberately infected alt.usage.english.
>
> In the name of all that is human, WHY? Did one of us eat your
> grandmother or something?

Well, I'd apologize, since you seem to feel strongly about it,
but I do think the point under discussion is very much on topic
in alt.usage.english, and the group gets so much traffic already
that I didn't think a bit more would be amiss. As it turns out,
I got only half a dozen or so replies.

> Time to move a rule from the group kill file to the global one, anyway.

For your killfiling convenience, I gave the redirected post a new
subject line:

"a question for a.u.e. from c.l.c. (was Re: Edward Nilges' lie)"

--
B. L. Massingill
ObDisclaimer: I don't speak for my employers; they return the favor.

==============================================================================
TOPIC: question
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.c/t/4c7d70ccf9ccb9d9?hl=en
==============================================================================

== 1 of 2 ==
Date: Mon, Apr 12 2010 2:14 am
From: Nick Keighley

On 12 Apr, 04:26, Uno <merrilljen...@q.com> wrote:
> Keith Thompson wrote:
> > Abdulmalik Muhammad <desku...@gmail.com> writes:
> >> Hi, my name is Abdulmalik Muhammad Yusuf and my question
> >> is..................................
> >> what is array in c programming lang?
>
> > Please tell your instructor and fellow students at IUT that asking
> > elementary questions like this in a newsgroup is a very bad way to
> > learn the language, and that those of us who actually participate in
> > the newsgroup are becoming quite annoyed.
>
> I sat in on my uncle's C class at St. Louis University. From the rear,
> I could see how the students participated. About half of them surfed
> the net. when I compared notes with my uncle after the lecture, I found
> no correlation between achievement and those who seemed to be fooling
> around.

the apparently inattentive probably fell into two groups, those who
were bored because they didn't understand the material, those who were
bored because they very well understood the material and those, oh
wait, THREE main groups, those who can listen and surf at the same
time and, oh wait, AMONGST the main groups, observers planted by the
sociology department for the anthropology unit.

> I think the word array essentially means matrix anymore.

not really

> Yes it has
> particular meanings in the jargon of C, mathematics and english in
> general, but I think the first definition would have dimension 2.

err. no, I think. Array is widely used in computer science to mean a
contiguous sequence of objects of identical type.

> Are 4 dimensional arrays everywhere?

a what? Do you mean "is the term 4D array widely used"? Again
perfectly comprehensible in CS and used in many computer languages.
Yeah maths use matrix or vector for the 1D case.

> No. I think elsewhere in physics
> and math, we would call it a tensor. The section of mathematical help
> of Einstein's 1916 General Relativity is 20 of the most readable pages
> on their manipulation.

== 2 of 2 ==
Date: Mon, Apr 12 2010 5:26 am
From: Richard Heathfield

Nick Keighley wrote:

<snip>

> Yeah maths use matrix or vector for the 1D case.

AFAICR, in mathematics the word "vector" is used for 1D, and "matrix"
for 2D. "Tensor" is used for higher dimensions (3+).

--
Richard Heathfield <http://www.cpax.org.uk>
Email: -http://www. +rjh@
"Usenet is a strange place" - dmr 29 July 1999
Sig line vacant - apply within

==============================================================================
TOPIC: Line drawing with Bresenham more than one pixel thick
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.c/t/a26c26d92f082ac7?hl=en
==============================================================================

== 1 of 1 ==
Date: Mon, Apr 12 2010 4:23 am
From: Gazza

On 10 Apr, 04:06, Dann Corbit <dcor...@connx.com> wrote:
> In article <ef2503e6-6606-4c72-94fb-ce3fc3588c41
> @q23g2000yqd.googlegroups.com>, christian....@cbau.wanadoo.co.uk says...
>
>
>
> > On Apr 8, 9:35 am, Gazza <garyw...@googlemail.com> wrote:
> > > Hello,
>
> > > I am using the Bresenham algorithm to draw single pixel lines with no
> > > problems. However I would like to draw some lines which are more than
> > > one pixel thick. Is there a modification to this algorithm that I can
> > > use or can anyone point me to an algorithm or resource that I can use
> > > to investigate / achieve this?
>
> > Sure. But I think you would first have to define what you actually
> > want to draw. If the line is say ten pixel thick, do you want to draw
> > a rectangle rotated into the right position, or a parallelogram?
>
> Typically neither.
>
> When I had the same problem, I inserted pie slices into the gaps where
> the segments change direction (for non-raster devices like pen
> plotters). If you have a raster device, then you can just add a circle
> the same diameter as the the line segments at the ends of all interior
> direction changes.

Thanks for all of your comments. I will be more careful next time when
posting a question to a group. I thought that more or you would be
interested in solving the issue than complaining about using the wrong
group. Many apologies if I offended anyone by asking a question I
thought that you would be able to answer as C programmers. Special
thanks to those who actually gave some guidance.

Gary

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Monday, April 12, 2010

comp.lang.c - 25 new messages in 11 topics - digest

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