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From: Tim Rentsch
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: Programming exercise/challenge
Date: Sat, 12 Dec 2020 19:23:24 -0800
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Anton Shepelev writes:
> Tim Rentsch:
>
>> It was taken from this page
>>
>> https://clc-wiki.net/wiki/K%26R2_solutions:Chapter_1:Exercise_23
>>
>> and you may want to try looking there for other ideas.
>
> The program on that page annotead as:
>
> This program breaks most of the above submissions:
>
> does not compile even in the original form!
In some sense deliberately so. It was written at a time before
C99 had achieved widespread adoption, so most C code and most C
programmers were not using the // style comments. The program
you mention exploits the lack of // comments so that it compiles
under C90 rules (at least I'm pretty sure it does) but not under
C99 rules. At the point in the program where //* occurs, putting
a space between the two /'s should make it compile also under C99
rules. (The foregoing based on my best understanding, I'm not
sure if I've tested it.)