Path: csiph.com!eternal-september.org!feeder.eternal-september.org!reader02.eternal-september.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail From: Keith Thompson Newsgroups: comp.lang.c Subject: Re: "C's Biggest Mistake" Date: Sat, 07 Apr 2018 16:03:39 -0700 Organization: None to speak of Lines: 35 Message-ID: References: <9c7013a2-17bd-4f94-a378-1c45151d0d45@googlegroups.com> <2%LxC.241942$Oy5.103980@fx11.am4> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Injection-Info: reader02.eternal-september.org; posting-host="a514ab945b6e8c6b28a176a69904e725"; logging-data="30387"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@eternal-september.org"; posting-account="U2FsdGVkX1+Wn4H3ZC4GCoyevE76EbsO" User-Agent: Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/23.1 (gnu/linux) Cancel-Lock: sha1:+D/3dFl4+jAX7HcvT84tib2sOCA= sha1:U/R8ksBDLVI9wyILEwCl7qhUjyg= Xref: csiph.com comp.lang.c:128910 bartc writes: > On 07/04/2018 23:04, Keith Thompson wrote: >> bartc writes: > >> My point is that the C language can't assume letters are contiguous. > > Programmers can. And do. It makes coding a little bit simpler. > >> What exactly was your point? > > That it doesn't matter. No one cares about EBCDIC. That is manifestly untrue. You don't have to care about it (and I frankly don't care whether you care about it or not), but EBCDIC still exists. If you don't have to deal with it yourself, that's fine. If you insist on pretending it doesn't, that's your problem. [...] > The advantage of writing 'A'...'Z' is too great to just dismiss it > because it might not work on EBCDIC. Most people will never see EBCDIC > in their lives and it will likely die out. The advantage of writing isupper(c) is even greater if you care about letters outside the English alphabet. Imagine having accented letters in your name and having to deal with software written by people with your attitude. "Sorry, your name is not valid." [...] -- Keith Thompson (The_Other_Keith) kst-u@mib.org Working, but not speaking, for JetHead Development, Inc. "We must do something. This is something. Therefore, we must do this." -- Antony Jay and Jonathan Lynn, "Yes Minister"