Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!mnetor!seismo!munnari!moncskermit!basser!john From: john@basser.oz (John Mackin) Newsgroups: comp.sources.d Subject: Re: Multivol dumps core? Message-ID: <847@basser.oz> Date: Tue, 16-Dec-86 20:23:04 EST Article-I.D.: basser.847 Posted: Tue Dec 16 20:23:04 1986 Date-Received: Thu, 18-Dec-86 00:25:48 EST References: <403@vixie.UUCP> Reply-To: john@basser.oz (John Mackin) Organization: Dept of Comp Sci, Uni of Sydney, Australia Lines: 45 Summary: maybe it does, but not for the ``reason'' you gave In article <403@vixie.UUCP> paul@vixie.UUCP (Paul Vixie Esq) writes: > if (no_eoln = (*argv[1] == '-' && *++argv[1] == 'n')) { > > Now, since C doesn't guarantee order of evaluation, this seems blatently > wrong. I don't know neccessarily that this is the cause of my problem, > but if the rest of the code has errors like this, I don't want to bother > trying to find the cause of the core dumps. Oh dear. Restraint, tolerance, good karma. Remember those good loops you flew over the dam this morning. Deep breaths. NOW... Look here! I am not going to say that multivol is well coded. I can't comment on that, as I have never looked at its internals. But I am MOST CERTAINLY going to say that your specific criticism is totally incorrect, unjustified, and unwarranted, and in fact you do not know what you are talking about. A little knowledge, it would seem, is a dangerous thing. You state that ``C does not guarantee order of evaluation''. This is patently false. If you look in the index of K&R, you will see "order of evaluation" indexed in quite a few places. The VERY FIRST PLACE IT IS MENTIONED is on page 19, section 1.5, under "Word Counting", where it states: Expressions connected by && or || are evaluated left to right ... Sure sounds like a guarantee to me! Certainly, order of evalution is undefined for many of C's operators; you will see this if you look at some of the other places mentioned in the index entry. It IS defined for && and ||. Please find out what you are talking about before you post to the net. Thousands of people worldwide will read your articles. If you post misinformation, you will confuse some of them. They may write code which is wrong or form ideas which are wrong, due to your posted misinformation. Please, get it right. John Mackin, Basser Department of Computer Science, University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia john@basser.oz.AU (john%basser.oz@SEISMO.CSS.GOV) {seismo,hplabs,mcvax,ukc,nttlab}!munnari!basser.oz!john