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From: gwyn@brl-smoke.ARPA (Doug Gwyn )
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: Writing readable code
Message-ID: <6059@brl-smoke.ARPA>
Date: Sun, 5-Jul-87 16:17:36 EDT
Article-I.D.: brl-smok.6059
Posted: Sun Jul  5 16:17:36 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 5-Jul-87 22:42:55 EDT
References: <1158@copper.TEK.COM> <6858@auspyr.UUCP> <17171@cca.CCA.COM> <22635@sun.uucp> <262@auvax.UUCP>
Reply-To: gwyn@brl.arpa (Doug Gwyn (VLD/VMB) )
Organization: Ballistic Research Lab (BRL), APG, MD.
Lines: 23

In article <262@auvax.UUCP> rwa@auvax.UUCP (Ross Alexander) writes:
>In article <22635@sun.uucp>, guy%gorodish@Sun.COM (Guy Harris) writes:
>> "getchar"
>> will return EOF when it hits end-of-file; EOF (-1) will get converted
>> to '\377' ... which compares equal to 255 but not to -1.
>Isn't there a little room here for arguement?

No, of course not (:-)).  The semantics of the expression in question
are well understood to agree with Guy Harris's explanation and in fact
the forthcoming ANS for C will back him up on this.

>the VAX 4.2bsd cc agrees with me...

? The most buggy of the generally-used C compilers, eh?

>whilst the SUN 4.2 cc feels otherwise...

Is Sun up to SunOS Release 4.2 already?

All the argument for your "intuition" of what should happen is beside
the point -- there are regular semantics for C expressions, and no
legitimate compiler should circumvent them.  The whole point of
specifications and standards is to define exactly what the rules are.