twitter: comp.lang.c - 25 new messages in 9 topics

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

comp.lang.c@googlegroups.com

Today's topics:

* off topic but please forgive me me and answer - 1 messages, 1 author
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.c/t/47f38c278b5880ee?hl=en
* Implementing strstr - 6 messages, 2 authors
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.c/t/a3fe05ab352d5774?hl=en
* Edward Nilges' lie - 4 messages, 2 authors
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.c/t/14c6f4a4afe68f60?hl=en
* substring finding problem! - 1 messages, 1 author
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.c/t/cf9bd97208e0c3a3?hl=en
* Efficency and the standard library - 4 messages, 2 authors
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.c/t/ad9fea19f2f7dd61?hl=en
* "jobs in australia" "jobs in australia for pakistanis" "jobs in australia
melbourne" "jobs in australia for immigrants" "jobs in australia for
international students" "jobs in australia for foreigners" ON http://
jobsinaustralia-net.blogspot.com/ - 1 messages, 1 author
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.c/t/b3ff8779f2b9dfd6?hl=en
* weird problem with strcmp() - 4 messages, 3 authors
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.c/t/701c12c082eb3aa7?hl=en
* Pausing screen? - 2 messages, 1 author
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.c/t/8b8e7943a28d1f6c?hl=en
* Personal attacks by moderators in a moderated group are unprofessional - 2
messages, 2 authors
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.c/t/fcaffc6b8db42751?hl=en

==============================================================================
TOPIC: off topic but please forgive me me and answer
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.c/t/47f38c278b5880ee?hl=en
==============================================================================

== 1 of 1 ==
Date: Fri, Apr 2 2010 10:05 am
From: Ben Bacarisse

Phil Carmody <thefatphil_demunged@yahoo.co.uk> writes:
<snip>
> A very conventional answer. I prefer half times half being three,
> as half a dozen times half a dozen is three dozen.

It's 1/4 of a square dozen (which is 3 dozen as you say).

--
Ben.

==============================================================================
TOPIC: Implementing strstr
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.c/t/a3fe05ab352d5774?hl=en
==============================================================================

== 1 of 6 ==
Date: Fri, Apr 2 2010 10:20 am
From: blmblm@myrealbox.com

In article <slrnhr24iv.ob2.usenet-nospam@guild.seebs.net>,
Seebs <usenet-nospam@seebs.net> wrote:
> On 2010-03-29, Keith Thompson <kst-u@mib.org> wrote:
> > Squeamizh <squeamz@hotmail.com> writes:
> >> On Mar 27, 1:52 pm, Seebs <usenet-nos...@seebs.net> wrote:
> >>> On 2010-03-27, blmblm myrealbox.com <blm...@myrealbox.com> wrote:
> >>> > In article <52ae4a94-4361-417c-871d-a72b9fbde...@t17g2000prg.googlegroups.com>,
> >>> > spinoza1111 <spinoza1...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> >>> (Thanks for quoting this, I never see his garbage except when quoted.)
>
> >> You killfiled spinoza so that you don't have to see his garbage. Then
> >> you thank someone for quoting his garbage and circumventing your
> >> killfile. I suggest you remove spinoza from your killfile.
>
> > Or keep him there and stop replying to him. Your call.
>
> Actually, I like it the way it is -- I get a filtered feed of an occasional
> actual technical question, without the flood of irrelevant insults.
>
> The guy's unambiguously a usenet kook, but his questions on technical
> issues are occasionally interesting, for much the same reason that it
> can be occasionally interesting to try to answer questions asked by
> other novice-level programmers. It's just not very rewarding to me
> to search through several-hundred line posts full of tinfoil hat nonsens
> to find an occasional gem like his observation that there should be
> a default case in a getopt() switch because someone could modify the
> argument string but not remember to add the corresponding case. That
> was actually a good idea, I think.
>
> So I appreciate it when people who have more patience with his rambling
> nonsense than I do filter out the occasional things worth responding to
> and make them noticeable.

Just for the record, I think I'm going to more or less bow out
of that role; it really does feel uncomfortably like "let's you
and him fight." As a parting shot, maybe, I'll mention message IDs
of two posts you *might* want to look at [*].

<24d9395d-4684-49cf-b9fb-3ccab608ca49@n34g2000yqb.googlegroups.com>

is a reply to one of your posts about your build tool thing, the one
that uses (used?) the quick-and-dirty %s-replacing code.

<262e34a1-0e34-47b2-9fbc-459a25f09473@q16g2000yqq.googlegroups.com>

is a follow-up to your comment about your parents being math teachers,
and has a specific list of questions.

[*] Or not.

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

== 2 of 6 ==
Date: Fri, Apr 2 2010 10:26 am
From: blmblm@myrealbox.com

In article <slrnhr73eq.aip.usenet-nospam@guild.seebs.net>,
Seebs <usenet-nospam@seebs.net> wrote:
> On 2010-03-31, blmblm myrealbox.com <blmblm@myrealbox.com> wrote:
> > In article <98f7a74b-204d-4611-a598-2d23d9b98393@30g2000yqi.googlegroups.com>,
> > spinoza1111 <spinoza1111@yahoo.com> wrote:

[ snip ]

> > Maybe I'm overlooking something obvious here, but I'm not imagining
> > how this is possible. I mean, either the code is interpreted,
> > or it's compiled at *some* point, either as part of startup cost
> > or -- what?
>
> Well, a typical thing would be, say you want to run the same script hundreds
> of times, you'd load the script once and then execute it hundreds of times.
> (This is how any performance-oriented implementation of Ruby on Rails will
> do it, for instance.)

I guess I'm not quite understanding how you load something once and
reuse it -- I mean, where/how does it stick around? -- but the problem
may be that I'm thinking in terms of a typical shell environment, in
which once a process/program ends, its resources are freed, while you
(or whoever) are talking about -- something else.

Someone else -- spinoza1111 maybe -- mentioned TSR, which I guess
is how one would accomplish this in, um, DOS maybe? (an environment
I know next to nothing about), but -- is there a UNIX equivalent?
I guess shared libraries *might* sort of qualify, but isn't the
operating system allowed to remove shared-library code from memory
when there are no processes using it? Or is there a way to keep it
around .... (Hm, maybe explicitly managing "shared memory segments"?)

(Off-topic, but not as badly as some recent posts.)

[ snip ]

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

== 3 of 6 ==
Date: Fri, Apr 2 2010 10:27 am
From: Seebs

On 2010-04-02, blmblm myrealbox.com <blmblm@myrealbox.com> wrote:
> Just for the record, I think I'm going to more or less bow out
> of that role; it really does feel uncomfortably like "let's you
> and him fight." As a parting shot, maybe, I'll mention message IDs
> of two posts you *might* want to look at [*].

><24d9395d-4684-49cf-b9fb-3ccab608ca49@n34g2000yqb.googlegroups.com>

> is a reply to one of your posts about your build tool thing, the one
> that uses (used?) the quick-and-dirty %s-replacing code.

Used, past-tense; we changed the way we generated the strings in which
to perform substitutions, so I switched to the version which took
ten minutes to write instead of five minutes to write, which was posted
here quite a while back.

And I think I'll pass. The term "reply" normally carries connotations
of some kind of relevance or lucidity, which I am not sure are applicable.

><262e34a1-0e34-47b2-9fbc-459a25f09473@q16g2000yqq.googlegroups.com>

> is a follow-up to your comment about your parents being math teachers,
> and has a specific list of questions.

If he'd answered my specific, technically relevant, questions back when I
first tried to engage him, I *might* care. As is, I have pretty much no
interest. I'll consider questions addressed to me by people that I believe
to be sane.

> [*] Or not.

Yeah, that.

-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!

== 4 of 6 ==
Date: Fri, Apr 2 2010 10:29 am
From: Seebs

On 2010-04-02, blmblm myrealbox.com <blmblm@myrealbox.com> wrote:
> In article <slrnhr73eq.aip.usenet-nospam@guild.seebs.net>,
> Seebs <usenet-nospam@seebs.net> wrote:
>> Well, a typical thing would be, say you want to run the same script hundreds
>> of times, you'd load the script once and then execute it hundreds of times.
>> (This is how any performance-oriented implementation of Ruby on Rails will
>> do it, for instance.)

> I guess I'm not quite understanding how you load something once and
> reuse it -- I mean, where/how does it stick around? -- but the problem
> may be that I'm thinking in terms of a typical shell environment, in
> which once a process/program ends, its resources are freed, while you
> (or whoever) are talking about -- something else.

Right. A typical example would be, say, a long-running daemon, such as a
web server, which can load a script environment once, then pass new hunks
of data to the already-loaded script.

An example that may affect more people is SpamAssassin, which has a very
expensive hunk of startup which is paid once to start a daemon, which clients
then connect to, so the clients don't have to do all that work.

> Someone else -- spinoza1111 maybe -- mentioned TSR, which I guess
> is how one would accomplish this in, um, DOS maybe? (an environment
> I know next to nothing about), but -- is there a UNIX equivalent?
> I guess shared libraries *might* sort of qualify, but isn't the
> operating system allowed to remove shared-library code from memory
> when there are no processes using it? Or is there a way to keep it
> around .... (Hm, maybe explicitly managing "shared memory segments"?)

That wouldn't help, because the shared part isn't the expensive part to set
up. What you end up doing to reuse script fragments is some kind of ongoing
daemon -- which, it turns out, would be an atrociously poor fit for the
circumstances in which I wanted to do that string replacement.

I think you'll find that the *essential* objection to my solution is that
it was picked by me, and therefore is offensive to Nilges.

== 5 of 6 ==
Date: Fri, Apr 2 2010 10:35 am
From: blmblm@myrealbox.com

In article <lnr5n0mk73.fsf@nuthaus.mib.org>,
Keith Thompson <kst-u@mib.org> wrote:
> blmblm@myrealbox.com <blmblm@myrealbox.com> writes:
> [...]
> > (It occurs to me to wonder, by the way, why we're having this
> > discussion of Seebs's code in threads other than the one in which
> > he posted the URL for it. But, you know -- whatever.)
>
> It's at least partly because *you* keep discussing it with him.

Well, could be -- but my point was not why the discussion was
taking place [*], but why it was taking place in *this* thread,
rather than in the thread Seebs started by posting a URL to the
code and asking for comments.

[*] And really, I think at least some of the actual discussion has
been at least close to on-topic -- idiomatic use of switch, for
example.

As for whether I should just stop replying to any of spinoza1111's
posts -- yeah well, I'll probably get there eventually.

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

== 6 of 6 ==
Date: Fri, Apr 2 2010 10:58 am
From: Seebs

On 2010-04-02, blmblm myrealbox.com <blmblm@myrealbox.com> wrote:
> [*] And really, I think at least some of the actual discussion has
> been at least close to on-topic -- idiomatic use of switch, for
> example.

Exactly! To be sure, thus far, nearly every such conversation I've
seen involving Nilges has involved him saying something unambiguously
wrong and then being corrected, but since a lot of his mistakes are
similar to those newbies make, it could be pedagogically useful even
if it's not otherwise informative.

==============================================================================
TOPIC: Edward Nilges' lie
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.c/t/14c6f4a4afe68f60?hl=en
==============================================================================

== 1 of 4 ==
Date: Fri, Apr 2 2010 10:21 am
From: blmblm@myrealbox.com

In article <0b22b000-2c2f-4e56-bbe7-146cb710356c@u31g2000yqb.googlegroups.com>,
BruceS <bruces42@hotmail.com> wrote:
> On Mar 30, 4:44 am, blm...@myrealbox.com <blm...@myrealbox.com> wrote:
> > In article <b98dd10e-8f4d-48d2-b232-0ac27a8fa...@k5g2000pra.googlegroups.com>,
> >
> >
> >
> > spinoza1111 <spinoza1...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> > > On Mar 28, 1:50 am, blm...@myrealbox.com <blm...@myrealbox.com> wrote:
> <snip>
> > > > Perhaps the problem is not that we're not willing to defend our fellow
> > > > human beings but that we don't feel that this is a case in which such
> > > > defense is appropriate. (I can't speak for either of the other two, but
> > > > that's the case for me.)
> >
> > > Yes, we must be "appropriate". What puzzles me, however, is how people
> > > in corporations and here can appeal to a norm which is based not only
> > > on shared values but of knowledge, almost invisible here and
> > > deliberately hidden in most corporations, about other people's
> > > motivations and real feelings.
> >
> > > Basically, your notion of appropriateness is fucked up. This is
> > > because as in the corporation it allows minatory language as long as
> > > the language uses the right shibboleths and appeals to clerical
> > > conventions easily understood, but bans self-defense.
> >
> > You know, I knew when I wrote the post to which you're replying
> > that "appropriate" was not exactly the right word to express
> > my intended meaning [*], but I couldn't think of a better one,
> > and I still can't.
>
> Perhaps you meant to say "justified".

I considered and rejected "warranted" -- which I think is about
the same thing, in context.

> Are you trying to say that
> defense of spinoza1111 in this is not justified,

I'm not sure I have an opinion on that one way or another, and
if I did I might hesitate to express it here.

> or that any
> involvement in the conflict is {uninteresting|pointless|
> counterproductive},

I think that's closer to what I meant -- my thinking is that
little good, and probably at least some bad, would be likely
to result from public involvement in a conflict of this sort,
especially in a technical newsgroup.

> or something else entirely?
> HTH

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

== 2 of 4 ==
Date: Fri, Apr 2 2010 10:42 am
From: blmblm@myrealbox.com

In article <37c59530-8dc2-4143-8b72-1777a6f1d33b@z7g2000yqb.googlegroups.com>,
spinoza1111 <spinoza1111@yahoo.com> wrote:
> On Mar 30, 6:44 pm, blm...@myrealbox.com <blm...@myrealbox.com> wrote:
> > In article <b98dd10e-8f4d-48d2-b232-0ac27a8fa...@k5g2000pra.googlegroups.com>,
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > spinoza1111 <spinoza1...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> > > On Mar 28, 1:50 am, blm...@myrealbox.com <blm...@myrealbox.com> wrote:

[ snip ]

> > Going back to the main point of discussion, though:
> >
> > You appear to be saying that I and two other posters do not
> > complain about the behavior of Richard Heathfield and Peter
> > Seebach because we do not want to "soil [our] hands by defending
> > [our] fellow human beings". I can only speak for myself, but
> > that does not strike me as an accurate description of my reasons
> > for not complaining.
>
> Stating something, even in dulcet tones, is not an argument.

It's not meant as one. ("Dulcet" -- feh. Well, whatever.)

> So what are your reasons?

I decline to state them here, for various reasons that seem good
to me, among them a fair amount of uncertainty in my own mind
about who if anyone is in the right.

> I'd say they constitute "enabling" in which people try to be formally
> but not substantively fair.

You've made this point before, yes, and I find it -- eh, "not
unpersuasive" [*], maybe, but also not especially compelling.

[*] With apologies to George Orwell. Yes, I read that essay too.

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

== 3 of 4 ==
Date: Fri, Apr 2 2010 10:51 am
From: Seebs

On 2010-04-02, blmblm myrealbox.com <blmblm@myrealbox.com> wrote:
> You've made this point before, yes, and I find it -- eh, "not
> unpersuasive" [*], maybe, but also not especially compelling.

I think the issue is that "substantively fair" is often a set of
mutually-exclusive requirements, sorta like the Arrow Voting Paradox.

So the best you can do is try to be reasonably fair, or find compromises
that work well.

> [*] With apologies to George Orwell. Yes, I read that essay too.

Hee.

== 4 of 4 ==
Date: Fri, Apr 2 2010 10:57 am
From: blmblm@myrealbox.com

NOTE: Follow-ups set (I hope!) to alt.usage.english.

[ snip ]

> > > > > Indeed they have, and part of the problem are people who don't want to
> >
> > ("Part of the problem are"? Yeah well.)
>
> The grammar is correct although hypercorrect, since verbs of being in
> formal written grammar, being logically symmetrical (a==b) require
> agreement with the subject's plural-singular number even if the
> subject is on the left.

I find this argument completely unpersuasive, but I have little formal
training in such matters. It occurs to me that it would be quite
interesting to hear with the folks in alt.usage.english would make of
it, however, so I'm going to crosspost *and set follow-ups*. (I hope
the latter will keep subsequent discussion out of comp.lang.c.)

> "Part of the problem are people" is logically equivalent to "People
> are part of the problem". But if the valid transformation is applied
> to "Part of the problem is people", which sounds correct although less
> literate to me, you get "People is part of the problem", which is
> garbage.
>
> Furthermore, UK English not only allows, it mandates the plural for
> many associations of men and people which are not limited liability
> corporations: the BBC consistently says "Manchester United win" and
> "the Labour party require" where Americans, were they to talk about
> either collection of lads and lasses, would say "Manchester United
> wins" and "the Labour Party requires."
>
> Americans, as an interesting sidelight, almost consistently make the
> name of their sports teams plurals as in Chicago Cubs, Bulls and Da
> Bears to sidestep this problem. I believe the American practice of "e
> pluribus unum" started when Republican newspaper editors required
> former Rebs working as low level reporters to use singular number when
> referring to the United States in order to show the Rebs that they'd
> been beaten in The War of Southern Rebellion. This confused early
> baseball players who probably decided that they were plural and named
> their team "The Gashouse Gorillas" or Plug Uglies to confirm this.
>
> Therefore, if the plural entity "people" is a subset of the entity
> "part", the cardinality of "part" must be greater than that of people,
> and the use of "is" or "are" confirms this, and my usage is correct.
>
> I admit that when people follows part it looks unexpected for the same
> reason you're supposed to say "it is I" like a dork when you knock on
> your girlfriend's door at 3:00 AM and she squeaks, who is it. Careful
> writers simply invert the "subject" and "object" where in formal
> grammar the noun or noun phrase is actually a subject.
>
> "Don't compete with me. I have more experience, and I choose the
> weapons." - Dijkstra

[ snip ]

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

==============================================================================
TOPIC: substring finding problem!
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.c/t/cf9bd97208e0c3a3?hl=en
==============================================================================

== 1 of 1 ==
Date: Fri, Apr 2 2010 10:21 am
From: blmblm@myrealbox.com

In article <10ec5822-1f0e-4fce-a946-3118031f77c1@w20g2000prm.googlegroups.com>,
spinoza1111 <spinoza1111@yahoo.com> wrote:
> On Mar 7, 2:57 am, blm...@myrealbox.com <blm...@myrealbox.com> wrote:
> > In article <07e636b1-70bc-46c7-a976-6cd6a05e3...@c34g2000pri.googlegroups.com>,
> >
> > spinoza1111 <spinoza1...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> > > On Feb 27, 1:57 am, blm...@myrealbox.com <blm...@myrealbox.com> wrote:
> > > > In article <f6600f51-6210-436f-9f7e-50846632c...@k6g2000prg.googlegroups.com>,

[ snip ]

> > > > > > that because there are some factors at work that won't be
> > > > > > generally true? What about replace(banana, ana, xno)?
> > > > > > Should that be bxnono or bxnxno?
> >
> > > > > The fact that there is a group of answers does not make the question a
> > > > > question of a crazy man! In fact, it makes it a good scientific
> > > > > question, albeit over the heads of the creeps here.
> >
> > > > My point was that I don't think that there's an obvious most-sensible
> > > > choice here. How about if you just answer my question -- should
> > > > replace(banana, ana, xno) be bxnono or bxnxno? If you aren't sure,
> > > > how do you decide what your code should do?
> >
> > > Whoa. I'm not sure. "Science" is about possibility as well as fact.
> >
> > Well, my thinking is that it's not possible to write correct code --
> > indeed, the notion of "correct code" is meaningless -- if you don't
> > know what its output should be for any arbitrary input. Trying to
> > settle the matter by experiment .... I've never been entirely
> > comfortable with the idea of computer science as science in the
> > first place -- I mean, the thing being observed is not external
> > to the process as it is with the "real" sciences, but somehow
> > a creation of the same process used to do the observing. (I'm not
> > explaining that very well but perhaps the idea comes across.)
>
> It does not.

I'm not sure which part isn't clear ....

One point I was trying to make was about whether "correct" has
any meaning in the absence of a formal specification. I think it
does not, though perhaps there are other criteria that are sometimes
more appropriate for evaluating programs, as mentioned in my earlier
post (quoted below).

The other point was about whether it even makes sense to regard
CS as a science, and I have mixed feelings about that: There
are some things one does in CS (programming/debugging is the
example that comes to my mind) in which the classical scientific
method (as I understand it) is useful. However, with the natural
sciences, the object of study is external to the study in a way
that I think is not the case in CS. I don't know how to say it
better than that. <shrug>

> > I guess I *can* imagine situations in which one would want to
> > try out different possibilities, particularly with regard to
> > user interface. Or, now that I think about it, I suppose if one
> > is simulating some sort of physical process one might want to
> > try different algorithms/approaches and find out which one gives
> > results that fit best with the thing being simulated. But to me
> > that seems vaguely unsound -- "we don't really know why this works,
> > but it seems to". <shrug>
> >
> > > However, I do think that for the same reason your notion of "concat"
> > > is cool since it is independent of direction, I think that a "flat" or
> > > one-time application of "replace" is one of those phony notions that
> > > only seem useful. The basic notion is not replace once, it is replace
> > > until no change, as in macro replacement. I think we can prove that
> > > there's no instance of a replace that always changes the string when
> > > applied.
> >
> > > Let us call an implementation of replace(master, target, replacement)
> > > "kewl" when and only when it is "independent of left to right or right
> > > to left order". I claim that the only form of replace that is "kewl"
> > > is nondeterministic. To simulate it you'd have to apply the
> > > replacement rule randomly. It would sometimes return bonona, and other
> > > times it would return banono.
> >
> > You've lost me here. <shrug>
>
> I don't know why, since nondeterministic algorithms are useful,
> because they are generalizations, as in the case of automata, of
> deterministic algorithms.

Still lost. Is this particular application of nondeterminism
useful?

[ snip ]

> > > Turing's Halting Problem is True, and created software, but it's not a
> > > spec.
> >
> > How can a problem be True?
>
> Because Turing's negative result was proven to be true, and it allowed
> computer science to avoid being alchemy, the search for an impossible
> program that could determine whether any other program halted.

I was being nitpicky about usage -- it's not the *problem* that's
true, in my usage (of "true"), but the claim (backed up by a proof)
that it has no solution. The *problem* can be interesting, or
meaningful, or deep, or .... But "true", no, not unless "true"
means something -- "rather different from what it means in STEM
fields" is the closest I can come to expressing my meaning.

[ snip ]

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

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

== 1 of 4 ==
Date: Fri, Apr 2 2010 10:43 am
From: blmblm@myrealbox.com

In article <45153929-1039-47e2-9904-e9d4c56c69ef@15g2000yqi.googlegroups.com>,
spinoza1111 <spinoza1111@yahoo.com> wrote:
> On Mar 28, 1:58 am, blm...@myrealbox.com <blm...@myrealbox.com> wrote:
> > In article <4e8de7e7-afab-443d-ac1b-f62f7b3d5...@z18g2000prh.googlegroups.com>,
> >
> > spinoza1111 <spinoza1...@yahoo.com> wrote:

[ snip ]

> > > As it happened, and as you should know, I decided to respond to
> > > Peter's errors (not searching for %s and using strchr and not strstr)
> > > to show programming at a much higher level than script kiddiedom.
> > > Since Nul terminated strings are a mistake, I decided to show how
> > > optional string.h is. This created an interesting challenge for the
> > > real coders here, and a lot of mockery from our local attention
> > > disordered script kiddie.
> >
> > I suppose there is some value in asking whether one can solve a
> > given problem without using standard tools, but to me it seems
> > like expressing one's ideas in rhyming and/or metrical verse --
> > an interesting challenge, but one that a reasonable person might
> > decline on the grounds that it isn't of practical value.
>
> Actually, for thousands of years world-wide and even today, mastering
> the writing of verse was an important part of education

Ah yes -- pedagogical value. I did neglect to mention that (so --
thanks for reminding me, maybe). The original string-replacement
problem might indeed be a nice problem for someone learning
programming, or C, and adding the constraint that it be solved
without using particular library functions might increase the,
well, pedagogical value.

> and it's
> making a comeback, since it's a way to learn language. No matter what
> the technical subject, in China, for thousands of years, engineers
> with classical training outdid the West because, owing to the
> Confucian doctrine of "the rectification of names", they knew (as
> people here don't) that being able to document is integral to
> engineering and not a frill.

[ snip ]

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

== 2 of 4 ==
Date: Fri, Apr 2 2010 10:49 am
From: blmblm@myrealbox.com

In article <0dfac17f-ca53-40df-b7f0-a669d6d93b67@30g2000yqi.googlegroups.com>,
spinoza1111 <spinoza1111@yahoo.com> wrote:
> On Mar 28, 1:52 am, blm...@myrealbox.com <blm...@myrealbox.com> wrote:
> > In article <df3a5dac-dd25-4f34-a079-bc222a195...@u15g2000prd.googlegroups.com>,

[ snip ]

> > > blm, Julienne, io_x, Ben and others have dived into unfamiliar code
> > > and understood unfamiliar styles because that is part of a
> > > professional programmer's job.

If you say so. I can't claim to be, or to have ever been, a
professional programmer, or even to have a complete understanding
of what such people do. In a long-ago previous life I did get
paid for working on code, but at the time I had little enough
relevant education and experience that "professional programmer"
might have been a stretch. My employers liked me because I had
some specific background they found useful, and I was (am?) good
at finding and fixing bugs. But "professional programmer" --
eh, I don't know. I'm apt to say "I'm not so much a hacker [in
the original sense] as a hack programmer" -- though one who does
enjoy tinkering with code. <shrug>

> > > I read Willem's code and understood it
> > > although his style is very different from mine. You look at a couple
> > > of variable names and then start assaulting your colleagues.
> >
> > You may be giving me too much credit here. One reason I did *not*
> > make more of an effort to fully understand your code (and I think I
> > was quite explicit in saying, when I posted about the bug I found,
> > that I had not done so) was that I find its style off-putting.
>
> Most technical people below a low level of ability agree with you, for
> they've self-selected themselves for the field based on low verbal
> accomplishment in schools where instead of being forced to remediate
> their verbal abilities, they were tossed aside like garbage. My style
> is off-putting because I use complete and often complex sentences in
> comments, I write dedicatory poems and I use vowels in data names to
> aid pronunciation in structured walkthrus and pair programs.

Long variable and function names are not in themselves necessarily
off-putting; I find Java's verbosity sometimes a bit over the top,
but the convention of long and descriptive names does mean that
one can often make an accurate guess about what a variable is, or a
function does, based simply on its name, and I think that has value.
Long names that consist almost exclusively of type information,
however -- not so much.

As for the verse .... Ah well. If it were more metrical, and the
content were different, I might actually find it a pleasant addition.
As it is -- not so much. Purely my opinion, though, since I am not
by training or inclination a literary critic.

Getting back to names, though -- I think there is a useful distinction
to be made between, say, ptrIndex1 and ptrIndexIntoMaster. To me the
latter might still be a bit off-putting, but it might also convey
enough information to make up for the verbosity.

> This style was more characteristic of the most competent generation of
> older programmers, including Knuth.
>
> Unfortunately, low verbal ability ordinarily translates into an
> unnoticed because normalized incompetence and lack of professional
> ethics such as are manifest in Seebach.
>
> Your opinion, nor the opinions of a normalized-deviant community,
> cannot in the end control. Even if most contemporary programmers hate
> my code because they are aliterate, it would be to betray myself and
> "my" truth to code in a different style unless I have contracted, for
> a consideration, not to.
>
> Have you noticed, Ms M, that I don't come in here to win a popularity
> contest?

Even someone who doesn't care about winning popularity contests
might care about whether he/she was communicating effectively
with his/her audience. (I suspect you don't, but hope springs
eternal, maybe.) Writing for a hypothetical reader who shares
your interests and background rather than for your actual readers --
ah well, to me it doesn't seem like the best use of anyone's
time, but if that's how you want to spend some of your 168 hours
per week, well -- <shrug>.

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

== 3 of 4 ==
Date: Fri, Apr 2 2010 10:55 am
From: blmblm@myrealbox.com

In article <ec7956a0-14d5-4abe-a554-2cd96ede406e@i25g2000yqm.googlegroups.com>,
spinoza1111 <spinoza1111@yahoo.com> wrote:
> On Mar 28, 1:48 am, blm...@myrealbox.com <blm...@myrealbox.com> wrote:
> > In article <00bedbb5-c247-4af5-afe5-24400a7c5...@t31g2000prh.googlegroups.com>,
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > spinoza1111 <spinoza1...@yahoo.com> wrote:

[ snip ]

> > > Give me a break. That reasoning makes no sense. You've got one data
> > > point when my posts are long enough to make the magnitude of the error
> > > 1/bigX, whereas other posters are large n over small x. I am often too
> > > lazy to check my spelling. Wanna know why? Because in fact, I'm
> > > literate enough not to have to.
> >
> > You might want to reconsider this claim -- unless "exagerrate",
> > "occurence", and "embarass" are variant spellings I'm not aware of.
> > ("occurence" might be a typo, because you also spell it with two r's
> > in some posts, but the one-r spelling recurs too.)
>
> I spend quite enough time here casting pearls before swine to check
> spelling all the time when my newsreader underscores words in red,

Good heavens. Your newsreader actually shows you possible typos,
and you don't fix them? I had assumed you didn't have easy
access to automatic spelling checking, and didn't go to extra
trouble (cutting and pasting text into something that would check
spelling, e.g.) because you were right often enough to make it
not worthwhile. Maybe I'm projecting, though -- I mean, with the
tool I use to compose posts, it would be extra trouble to check
spelling, and for Usenet posts I don't bother, since I'm willing
to commit the occasional typo, however embarrassing. If it were
zero trouble to check, though .... Eh. Whatever.

(I think there's something else wrong with the part of your sentence
above, but -- also "whatever". Skitt's Law [*] may apply.)

[*] I was going to cite the Wikipedia article for it, but either
I only imagined that there was one, or it has disappeared.
Well, GIYF.

> and
> this in fact seldom happens. Do me the courtesy of not so consistently
> confusing the trivial and important in what I've called corporate
> commodity fetishism, in which equivocation of concepts is the
> victimizing of people. Do me the courtesy of addressing the real
> problems in this newsgroup, which is the bullying of qualified and
> literate people by aliterate and incompetent thugs.
>
> Orthography is the least reliable marker of literacy, although it's
> important in formal writing.

To me this statement seems inconsistent with some of the things you
have said about other posters. Just sayin', I guess, but that was my
point.

> Far more important is knowing why in fact
> "part of the problem are people" is correct

It will be interesting to find out what the folks in alt.usage.english
have to say about that.

> and that in a final draft
> this needs to be changed to "people are part of the problem".

> Corporate females charged with bear-leading programmers often believe,
> in my experience, that they are the most literate person in the room.
> I am afraid that this is not the case here.

Quite -- because I certainly am not a "corporate female", nor have
I ever been "charged with bear-leading programmers". The closest
I've come to that -- and I admit I'm uncertain about exactly what
the duties of a "bear-leader" might be -- was a short period, in
a long-ago industry job, during which I was asked to train a new
addition to a group I worked in. But considering the nature of
the work done by the group (rather specialized mainframe-sysadmin
stuff), I doubt that fits your term.

(Yes, yes, I do rather suspect that your real point was that
you don't think I write very well. I probably don't. I think
I'm pretty good with details -- better in fact than many of my
colleagues, for whom it's apparently not a priority -- but not
so good with organization and content. <shrug>)

> I don't need to check my spelling because the words, whether spelled
> canonically or not, are usually so apposite as to be quite natural
> even in the "wrong" spelling.

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

== 4 of 4 ==
Date: Fri, Apr 2 2010 11:22 am
From: Seebs

On 2010-04-02, blmblm myrealbox.com <blmblm@myrealbox.com> wrote:
> In article <ec7956a0-14d5-4abe-a554-2cd96ede406e@i25g2000yqm.googlegroups.com>,
> spinoza1111 <spinoza1111@yahoo.com> wrote:
>> I spend quite enough time here casting pearls before swine to check
>> spelling all the time when my newsreader underscores words in red,

> Good heavens. Your newsreader actually shows you possible typos,
> and you don't fix them?

Wow.

> (I think there's something else wrong with the part of your sentence
> above, but -- also "whatever". Skitt's Law [*] may apply.)
>
> [*] I was going to cite the Wikipedia article for it, but either
> I only imagined that there was one, or it has disappeared.
> Well, GIYF.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muphry%27s_law

[sic.]

>> Do me the courtesy of addressing the real
>> problems in this newsgroup, which is the bullying of qualified and
>> literate people by aliterate and incompetent thugs.

>> Orthography is the least reliable marker of literacy, although it's
>> important in formal writing.

> To me this statement seems inconsistent with some of the things you
> have said about other posters. Just sayin', I guess, but that was my
> point.

Actually, I think he does have a significant point. For instance,
consider that an aliterate and incompetent thug spends a great deal of
his time bullying qualified and literate people. Partially because you
keep responding to him. :P

>> Far more important is knowing why in fact
>> "part of the problem are people" is correct

> It will be interesting to find out what the folks in alt.usage.english
> have to say about that.

It certainly doesn't sound correct to me, but hey.

>> and that in a final draft
>> this needs to be changed to "people are part of the problem".

I don't think I would agree with this. There is a substantial difference
in communicative content between:
part of the problem is X
and
X is part of the problem

(This gets back to the whole topic/comment distinction discussed previously.)

> Quite -- because I certainly am not a "corporate female",

I think "corporate" is his way of saying that you have not deferred to his
opinions sufficiently.

> (Yes, yes, I do rather suspect that your real point was that
> you don't think I write very well. I probably don't. I think
> I'm pretty good with details -- better in fact than many of my
> colleagues, for whom it's apparently not a priority -- but not
> so good with organization and content. <shrug>)

Well, I think you write real pretty.

>> I don't need to check my spelling because the words, whether spelled
>> canonically or not, are usually so apposite as to be quite natural
>> even in the "wrong" spelling.

*snerk*

Actually, he doesn't need to check his spelling because the marginal harm
to credibility done by misspelling so many words so often is essentially
lost in the noise compared to the effects of the content.

But it does fit with the general trend towards pathological narcissism
for him to imagine himself a particularly skilled and evocative writer.
Usenet kooks are usually extremely pleased with their own writing and its
effect. This is because their only standard for judging the effectiveness
or quality of writing is their own emotional response to it, and they always
respond positively to themselves.

==============================================================================
TOPIC: "jobs in australia" "jobs in australia for pakistanis" "jobs in
australia melbourne" "jobs in australia for immigrants" "jobs in australia for
international students" "jobs in australia for foreigners" ON http://
jobsinaustralia-net.blogspot.com/
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.c/t/b3ff8779f2b9dfd6?hl=en
==============================================================================

== 1 of 1 ==
Date: Fri, Apr 2 2010 10:53 am
From: raltbos@xs4all.nl (Richard Bos)

Naeem <kse.listed.co1@gmail.com> wrote:

> "jobs in australia for pakistanis"
> "jobs in australia for immigrants"

Ok, this _must_ be an April Fool.

Richard

==============================================================================
TOPIC: weird problem with strcmp()
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.c/t/701c12c082eb3aa7?hl=en
==============================================================================

== 1 of 4 ==
Date: Fri, Apr 2 2010 10:53 am
From: raltbos@xs4all.nl (Richard Bos)

Keith Thompson <kst-u@mib.org> wrote:

> Seebs <usenet-nospam@seebs.net> writes:
> > On 2010-04-01, rabbits77 <rabbits77@my-deja.com> wrote:
> >> x-no-archive: yes
> >
> > Why do you do this? It's annoying.
>
> That's odd. I don't see an "x-no-archive" in the original message.

Then your eMacs is broken (so what else is new), because it definitely
is there.

Richard

== 2 of 4 ==
Date: Fri, Apr 2 2010 11:01 am
From: gazelle@shell.xmission.com (Kenny McCormack)

In article <lnfx3dga3b.fsf@nuthaus.mib.org>,
Keith Thompson <kst-u@mib.org> wrote:
>Seebs <usenet-nospam@seebs.net> writes:
>> On 2010-04-01, rabbits77 <rabbits77@my-deja.com> wrote:
>>> x-no-archive: yes
>>
>> Why do you do this? It's annoying.
>
>That's odd. I don't see an "x-no-archive" in the original message.

Another episode of... CLC regs eating their own!

--
(This discussion group is about C, ...)

Wrong. It is only OCCASIONALLY a discussion group
about C; mostly, like most "discussion" groups, it is
off-topic Rorsharch revelations of the childhood
traumas of the participants...

== 3 of 4 ==
Date: Fri, Apr 2 2010 11:39 am
From: Keith Thompson

Seebs <usenet-nospam@seebs.net> writes:
> On 2010-04-02, Keith Thompson <kst-u@mib.org> wrote:
>> Seebs <usenet-nospam@seebs.net> writes:
>>> On 2010-04-01, rabbits77 <rabbits77@my-deja.com> wrote:
>>>> x-no-archive: yes
>
>>> Why do you do this? It's annoying.
>
>> That's odd. I don't see an "x-no-archive" in the original message.
>
> It's in the body of the post. But some interfaces may helpfully
> hide that.

Ah, you're right. Yes, my newsreader hid it from me; I had to save
the article to a file to be able to see it.

(For what it's worth, I agree that using the x-no-archive header
without a good reason is annoying.)

--
Keith Thompson (The_Other_Keith) kst-u@mib.org <http://www.ghoti.net/~kst>
Nokia
"We must do something. This is something. Therefore, we must do this."
-- Antony Jay and Jonathan Lynn, "Yes Minister"

== 4 of 4 ==
Date: Fri, Apr 2 2010 11:47 am
From: Keith Thompson

raltbos@xs4all.nl (Richard Bos) writes:
> Keith Thompson <kst-u@mib.org> wrote:
>> Seebs <usenet-nospam@seebs.net> writes:
>> > On 2010-04-01, rabbits77 <rabbits77@my-deja.com> wrote:
>> >> x-no-archive: yes
>> >
>> > Why do you do this? It's annoying.
>>
>> That's odd. I don't see an "x-no-archive" in the original message.
>
> Then your eMacs is broken (so what else is new), because it definitely
> is there.

It's a feature of Gnus, not of Emacs, and like most things it's
configurable. I won't argue whether it's "broken" or not, but I've
just reconfigured it.

==============================================================================
TOPIC: Pausing screen?
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.c/t/8b8e7943a28d1f6c?hl=en
==============================================================================

== 1 of 2 ==
Date: Fri, Apr 2 2010 12:13 pm
From: Kenneth Brody

On 3/28/2010 7:55 PM, Bill Reid wrote:
>
> More "contributions" from the brain trust that is comp.lang.c:
>
> On Mar 28, 2:38 pm, Richard Heathfield<r...@see.sig.invalid> wrote:
>> Zach wrote:
>>
>>> When I compile a C program in Dev-C++ (www.bloodshed.net) or in
>>> Microsoft Visual Studio 8 Express it will flash a DOS window with the
>>> results and then immediately close! How can I pause the screen?
[...]
>> > If you're running from the console, you still don't get the problem in
>> > the first place.
>> >
> Here is everything you didn't want to know or are too
> technically incompetent to understand about Windows "consoles":
>
> http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms682010(VS.85).aspx
>
> If you drill down you'll find that there is very clear
> rule that THE CONSOLE TERMINATES WHEN THE PROGRAM THAT
> LAUNCHED THE CONSOLE EXITS.

Too bad that the program he's running didn't create the console, meaning
that the above statement is irrelevant.

The statement "if you're running from the console" means "open a console
window [typically by running cmd.exe] and run your program within it".
Since cmd.exe, which created the console, is still running, the console
window is still there.

> You are thinking of a separate program called the
> "MS-DOS Command Prompt" or sumpin' that causes Windows
> to create a console for IT, and any program you run in
> it uses THAT program's console, so the console only
> terminates when THAT program exits.

And, BTW, it's not "MS-DOS" any more. The console hasn't been MS-DOS since
Win9x (95, 98, Me) days. The NT-based systems (NT, XP, 2000, Vista, Win7,
etc.) don't have MS-DOS. (They do have MS-DOS emulators, however. But the
console that you get by running cmd.exe is a true Windows application.)

[...]

--
Kenneth Brody

== 2 of 2 ==
Date: Fri, Apr 2 2010 12:18 pm
From: Kenneth Brody

On 3/28/2010 4:03 PM, Bill Reid wrote:
[...]
>> There's likely to be an option in the IDE (not in the compiler) to
>> keep the DOS window open after the program terminates, or perhaps
>> to direct the program's output to a window within the IDE itself.
>>
> Hmmmm, kind of like the dumb leading the dumber...
>
> Unless MICROSOFT provides such an option for their
> "CONSOLE" (which, to the very best of my knowledge,
> they DON'T), no IDE/compiler/whatever can change the
> behavior...

Then how do you explain the fact that when I run a program in Visual Studio
2005 and 2008 in non-debug mode, and I get "Press any key to continue . . ."
displayed in the console window? (Same thing for VS6, as I recall.)

Although it's not an available option (AFAIK) in VS2005 and 2008, there's
nothing stopping the IDE from doing the same thing when debugging the program.

> This is equivalent to writing a Windows(TM) app
> and asking if you can make the window oval instead
> of rectangular, then people "advising" that the
> IDE/compiler will "probably" have an option to do
> that...

Not quite. The IDE giveth the console window, and the IDE taketh it away.

--
Kenneth Brody

==============================================================================
TOPIC: Personal attacks by moderators in a moderated group are unprofessional
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.c/t/fcaffc6b8db42751?hl=en
==============================================================================

== 1 of 2 ==
Date: Fri, Apr 2 2010 12:18 pm
From: Julienne Walker

On Apr 2, 2:28 am, spinoza1111 <spinoza1...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> http://groups.google.com.hk/group/comp.lang.c.moderated/msg/2cac44082...
>
> This specific issue is being brought today to Apress' attention.

Honestly, I'm shocked he didn't post that public apology you've been
demanding and then make it clear it was an April Fools joke the day
after. That would have been a hoot.

== 2 of 2 ==
Date: Fri, Apr 2 2010 12:19 pm
From: Seebs

On 2010-04-02, Julienne Walker <happyfrosty@hotmail.com> wrote:
> Honestly, I'm shocked he didn't post that public apology you've been
> demanding and then make it clear it was an April Fools joke the day
> after. That would have been a hoot.

Meh, that's MUCH funnier.

The thing about reporting me to Apress is eerily familiar, just because
the kook who's been flooding soc.religion.quaker for the last decade
or so does similar things; he regularly reports people to various churches
of which they are not members.

==============================================================================

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Friday, April 2, 2010

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