Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.3 4.3bsd-beta 6/6/85; site l5.uucp Path: utzoo!linus!decvax!decwrl!sun!l5!gnu From: gnu@l5.uucp (John Gilmore) Newsgroups: net.unix-wizards,net.lang.c Subject: Re: same syntax for using pointers and arrays Message-ID: <119@l5.uucp> Date: Sat, 14-Sep-85 05:34:35 EDT Article-I.D.: l5.119 Posted: Sat Sep 14 05:34:35 1985 Date-Received: Sun, 15-Sep-85 05:15:04 EDT References: <1024@brl-tgr.ARPA> <1700001@fthood> Organization: Ell-Five [Consultants], San Francisco Lines: 13 Xref: linus net.unix-wizards:11970 net.lang.c:5819 Summary: great for fixed size buffer -> malloc conversions I've converted several C programs from having fixed buffers allocated at compile time, to malloc-ing their buffers at run time, and the change was almost always trivial, since you could turn a global array into a global pointer and change few if any other lines of source. This would be a pain in most other languages. I've done this to tar's tape block size at Sun and just did it to the terminal screen size in 2.10.3 vnews. *I think it's a great feature* although I wish they hadn't let you declare a function parameter as an array and then treated it as a pointer, since there definitely ARE differences. Maybe that can be a "commonly available extension" to the ANSI standard, rather than standardizing it that way?