Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!mnetor!seismo!nbires!isis!udenva!skajihar From: skajihar@udenva.UUCP ("Lord of Sith" Kajihara) Newsgroups: comp.lang.c,comp.lang.fortran,comp.lang.misc,comp.lang.modula2 Subject: Re: Collecting favorite bug stories Message-ID: <2722@udenva.UUCP> Date: Mon, 12-Jan-87 12:26:13 EST Article-I.D.: udenva.2722 Posted: Mon Jan 12 12:26:13 1987 Date-Received: Tue, 13-Jan-87 04:40:52 EST References: <3669@curly.ucla-cs.UCLA.EDU> Reply-To: skajihar@udenva.UUCP ("Lord of Sith" Kajihara) Distribution: world Organization: U of Denver Lines: 61 Xref: mnetor comp.lang.c:669 comp.lang.fortran:52 comp.lang.misc:134 comp.lang.modula2:84 In article <3669@curly.ucla-cs.UCLA.EDU> you write: >I am collecting anecdotes of experiences, (real or imagined) >for a book to be titled: > > MY FAVORITE BUGS: Humourous, and Horrible Experiences in Software > Engineering. > >As one might tell from the title, the book will be filled with wonderful >tales that programmers tell each other, over a few too many beers, >after a long day at the keyboard. > Sorry about posting this, but we do not support ARPA here. I don't know that this qualifies for what you ask, but the following comes from an inexperience with C and file processing. I had a program that would read from n text files and write to an output file. The first time that I ran the program, I exceeded the amount of disc quota I had on the system. The problem: in using command-line arguments to identify my files, I had inadverdently included my output file as input. Result: an endless loop. In the following code, argc is the number of arguments to the program, argv is an array of character pointers. argv[argc-1] is the output file. . . . for (inc = 1; inc <= argc-1; ++inc) process(argv[inc],argv[argc-1]); . . . The solution is to make the condition of the for loop '<' rather than '<='. I am only an undergraduate physics major so forgive me for my modest and possibly trivial solution. Scott Kajihara -- ________________________________________________________________________________ Me? A CS major? Now, I know that either you are joking or LAKking. -- Scott Kajihara UUCP: ...!udenva!skajihar Disclaimer: the above quote is not meant to insult computer science types; it is just that I could never become CS and remain my usual insane self (they have always said that we are strange but have charm). ________________________________________________________________________________