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| From | Ben Bacarisse <ben.usenet@bsb.me.uk> |
|---|---|
| Newsgroups | comp.lang.c |
| Subject | Re: Shortened form of condition |
| Date | 2015-11-11 16:05 +0000 |
| Organization | A noiseless patient Spider |
| Message-ID | <8737wcmsh9.fsf@bsb.me.uk> (permalink) |
| References | (6 earlier) <7557bd69-d93f-4197-a72a-48f71f7614dd@googlegroups.com> <lnvb99u5jg.fsf@kst-u.example.com> <d68831c0-2df8-4060-93dc-f326708cd1a1@googlegroups.com> <ln7flptzt0.fsf@kst-u.example.com> <cee1605c-0e59-446a-b940-ba59caff9af6@googlegroups.com> |
Alla _ <modelling.data@gmail.com> writes:
>> Does the author acknowledge the problems with this read_line() function?
>> Does he provide a safer alternative later?
>
> I don't recall him doing so.
>
> May I ask for an advice on a book that teaches professional coding and
> helps to develop correct coding principles, unlike Kochan's one?
I'm a bit out of date so I can't suggest any current books, but there is
a fundamental problem with trying to do what Kochan is trying to do.
He's trying to teach the basic concepts about procedural programming --
how to use variables, assignments, input/output, loops, functions and so
on to achieve some desired end result -- whist using C to do it.
Take one tiny point: testing if a character is "printable". There's a C
function for that: isprint. Now you may be able to skip the idea that
it's possibly macro as well, but "professional coding" requires a cast
of the argument in many cases:
if (isprint((unsigned char)ch)) ...
That's not something that someone learning programming should have to be
fussing about, but it will come up here (as it should) if anyone posts
code. And of course, you don't always need the cast. When do you?
It's not a question I'd have wanted to answer in programming 101 class.
One of the key ideas in programming is orthogonality -- roughly the idea
that separate concepts don't interact in unexpected ways. The better a
language is at manifesting this idea, the fewer the restrictions there
are on how you organise your programs. But in C, there are lots of
entangled notions. You can't pass an array to a function like you pass
almost any other value. You can't return a function from a function.
You can't define functions in the same places you can define other
things. Some arrays can be initialised with {...} notation and others
can't be. The list goes on and on.
These details can get in the way of learning the other skills -- how to
organise a program. Of course you eventually need both, but it's way
more complicated than it needs to be to lean them at the same time.
(All programming languages have restrictions, constraints and odd
quirks, or course, but only the most obsessive would deny that C has
acquired more than it's share of them over the years).
Writing bullet-proof C is not easy. You need to know lots of little
details, and, in general, the result will be "fussier" than the
equivalent in a more modern language. This is, therefore, a huge and
understandable temptation to simplify things to get going with the
programming, but this inevitably runs the risk of teaching bad C
programming, or at least sub-optimal C programming.
<snip>
--
Ben.
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Shortened form of condition Alla _ <modelling.data@gmail.com> - 2015-11-09 06:23 -0800
Re: Shortened form of condition Ben Bacarisse <ben.usenet@bsb.me.uk> - 2015-11-09 14:44 +0000
Re: Shortened form of condition James Kuyper <jameskuyper@verizon.net> - 2015-11-09 10:17 -0500
Re: Shortened form of condition Barry Schwarz <schwarzb@dqel.com> - 2015-11-09 09:20 -0800
Re: Shortened form of condition Alla _ <modelling.data@gmail.com> - 2015-11-09 10:11 -0800
Re: Shortened form of condition Malcolm McLean <malcolm.mclean5@btinternet.com> - 2015-11-09 10:35 -0800
Re: Shortened form of condition Alla _ <modelling.data@gmail.com> - 2015-11-10 00:14 -0800
Re: Shortened form of condition Barry Schwarz <schwarzb@dqel.com> - 2015-11-10 03:04 -0800
Re: Shortened form of condition glen herrmannsfeldt <gah@ugcs.caltech.edu> - 2015-11-10 21:42 +0000
Re: Shortened form of condition Ben Bacarisse <ben.usenet@bsb.me.uk> - 2015-11-10 11:13 +0000
Re: Shortened form of condition Alla _ <modelling.data@gmail.com> - 2015-11-10 07:58 -0800
Re: Shortened form of condition Richard Heathfield <rjh@cpax.org.uk> - 2015-11-10 17:06 +0000
Re: Shortened form of condition James Kuyper <jameskuyper@verizon.net> - 2015-11-10 12:11 -0500
Re: Shortened form of condition James Kuyper <jameskuyper@verizon.net> - 2015-11-10 14:01 -0500
Re: Shortened form of condition Keith Thompson <kst-u@mib.org> - 2015-11-10 08:30 -0800
Re: Shortened form of condition Alla _ <modelling.data@gmail.com> - 2015-11-10 09:07 -0800
Re: Shortened form of condition Keith Thompson <kst-u@mib.org> - 2015-11-10 09:29 -0800
Re: Shortened form of condition Alla _ <modelling.data@gmail.com> - 2015-11-10 11:02 -0800
Re: Shortened form of condition Keith Thompson <kst-u@mib.org> - 2015-11-10 11:33 -0800
Re: Shortened form of condition Alla _ <modelling.data@gmail.com> - 2015-11-11 00:28 -0800
Re: Shortened form of condition Ben Bacarisse <ben.usenet@bsb.me.uk> - 2015-11-11 16:05 +0000
Re: Shortened form of condition glen herrmannsfeldt <gah@ugcs.caltech.edu> - 2015-11-12 09:29 +0000
Re: Shortened form of condition Ben Bacarisse <ben.usenet@bsb.me.uk> - 2015-11-12 10:56 +0000
Re: Shortened form of condition Richard Heathfield <rjh@cpax.org.uk> - 2015-11-11 16:24 +0000
Re: Shortened form of condition Keith Thompson <kst-u@mib.org> - 2015-11-11 08:53 -0800
Re: Shortened form of condition Richard Heathfield <rjh@cpax.org.uk> - 2015-11-11 16:59 +0000
Re: Shortened form of condition Alla _ <modelling.data@gmail.com> - 2015-11-11 06:42 -0800
Re: Shortened form of condition Eric Sosman <esosman@comcast-dot-net.invalid> - 2015-11-10 14:04 -0500
Re: Shortened form of condition Barry Schwarz <schwarzb@dqel.com> - 2015-11-10 10:43 -0800
Re: Shortened form of condition James Kuyper <jameskuyper@verizon.net> - 2015-11-09 13:44 -0500
Re: Shortened form of condition Keith Thompson <kst-u@mib.org> - 2015-11-09 10:57 -0800
Re: Shortened form of condition Philip Lantz <prl@canterey.us> - 2015-11-10 01:52 -0800
Re: Shortened form of condition Ben Bacarisse <ben.usenet@bsb.me.uk> - 2015-11-09 19:35 +0000
Re: Shortened form of condition Keith Thompson <kst-u@mib.org> - 2015-11-09 11:52 -0800
Re: Shortened form of condition Alla _ <modelling.data@gmail.com> - 2015-11-10 00:33 -0800
Re: Shortened condition Richard Heathfield <rjh@cpax.org.uk> - 2015-11-10 09:00 +0000
Re: Shortened form of condition Tim Rentsch <txr@alumni.caltech.edu> - 2015-11-10 16:01 -0800
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