Re: Typecasting Pointers on a 64 bit System

From	blmblm@myrealbox.com <blmblm.myrealbox@gmail.com>
Newsgroups	comp.lang.c
Subject	Re: Typecasting Pointers on a 64 bit System
Date	2011-11-17 15:46 +0000
Organization	None
Message-ID	<9ikojfF3p7U2@mid.individual.net> (permalink)
References	<j9hbnp$13g$1@speranza.aioe.org> <9idj1lFhikU5@mid.individual.net> <4EC1A0BB.6060405@verizon.net> <slrnjc38ub.r7s.usenet-nospam@guild.seebs.net>

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In article <slrnjc38ub.r7s.usenet-nospam@guild.seebs.net>,
Seebs  <usenet-nospam@seebs.net> wrote:
> On 2011-11-14, James Kuyper <jameskuyper@verizon.net> wrote:
> > Probably; I think that the existence of "common sense" is a popular
> > delusion, based upon people projecting onto others their own
> > understanding of things. People suffering from that delusion often hold
> > those others to blame for the failure of that projection to match reality.
> 
> I tend towards this view, myself.
> 
> If nothing else, I do not consider it safe to assume that generic programmers
> not previously verified to understand the issues have any awareness of the
> issues of passing the address of "some object somewhere" into a thread
> mechanism or the like.
> 
> Heck.
> 
> Consider:
> 
> 	struct foo *f = malloc(sizeof(*f));
> 	free(f);
> 	f->x = 1;
> 
> I do not consider it a reasonable assumption that an arbitrary person
> with 3-5 years or more of experience programming C will see anything
> wrong here.  I've seen someone who had >10 years claimed experience and
> got promoted to lead engineer for a project who insisted that this was
> not only permissible but the only way to avoid memory leaks in C.

Remarkable.  Just .... remarkable.

For some reason lately the following quotation, attributed to Charles
Babbage, has been coming to mind a lot:

"On two occasions, I have been asked [by members of Parliament],
'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures,
will the right answers come out?' I am not able to rightly
apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such
a question." -- Charles Babbage (1791-1871)

Something about that "I am not able to rightly apprehend the kind
of confusion of ideas ...."  :-)

> ... And yes, the project failed utterly and everyone involved lost their
> jobs.  Funny only because it was over a decade ago.  :)
> 
> It is very easy for people who have finally been taught that it's not okay
> to return the address of a local variable to conclude that it's fine to
> pass the address of a local variable to a function you call.  And you're
> *calling* pthread_create(), see.  So that's fine.

Well, now *I*'m the one who's confused ....  Are you saying
it's not fine?  I suppose if the function you call creates an
independent thread, and that thread persists longer than the one
that created it, yes, there could be a problem ....  Was that
your point?

> Worse yet if they have done a lot of work in a language with closures.  :)

-- 
B. L. Massingill
ObDisclaimer:  I don't speak for my employers; they return the favor.

Thread

Typecasting Pointers on a 64 bit System Quentin Pope <qp19433@hotmail.NOSPAM.com> - 2011-11-10 20:21 +0000
  Re: Typecasting Pointers on a 64 bit System Lauri Alanko <la@iki.fi> - 2011-11-10 20:29 +0000
    Re: Typecasting Pointers on a 64 bit System Kaz Kylheku <kaz@kylheku.com> - 2011-11-10 20:51 +0000
      Re: Typecasting Pointers on a 64 bit System Kaz Kylheku <kaz@kylheku.com> - 2011-11-10 20:58 +0000
      Re: Typecasting Pointers on a 64 bit System James Kuyper <jameskuyper@verizon.net> - 2011-11-10 16:08 -0500
        Re: Typecasting Pointers on a 64 bit System Kaz Kylheku <kaz@kylheku.com> - 2011-11-10 21:35 +0000
          Re: Typecasting Pointers on a 64 bit System James Kuyper <jameskuyper@verizon.net> - 2011-11-10 17:18 -0500
            Re: Typecasting Pointers on a 64 bit System Kaz Kylheku <kaz@kylheku.com> - 2011-11-10 23:14 +0000
              Re: Typecasting Pointers on a 64 bit System Richard Damon <news.x.richarddamon@xoxy.net> - 2011-11-10 19:36 -0500
  Re: Typecasting Pointers on a 64 bit System Ben Pfaff <blp@cs.stanford.edu> - 2011-11-10 12:32 -0800
    Re: Typecasting Pointers on a 64 bit System James Kuyper <jameskuyper@verizon.net> - 2011-11-10 15:44 -0500
    Re: Typecasting Pointers on a 64 bit System Keith Thompson <kst-u@mib.org> - 2011-11-10 12:58 -0800
      Re: Typecasting Pointers on a 64 bit System blmblm@myrealbox.com <blmblm.myrealbox@gmail.com> - 2011-11-17 15:53 +0000
  Re: Typecasting Pointers on a 64 bit System Kaz Kylheku <kaz@kylheku.com> - 2011-11-10 20:45 +0000
    Re: Typecasting Pointers on a 64 bit System Kaz Kylheku <kaz@kylheku.com> - 2011-11-10 21:00 +0000
  Re: Typecasting Pointers on a 64 bit System Joe Pfeiffer <pfeiffer@cs.nmsu.edu> - 2011-11-10 15:14 -0700
  Re: Typecasting Pointers on a 64 bit System Ian Collins <ian-news@hotmail.com> - 2011-11-11 11:22 +1300
    Re: Typecasting Pointers on a 64 bit System William Ahern <william@wilbur.25thandClement.com> - 2011-11-14 11:10 -0800
      Re: Typecasting Pointers on a 64 bit System Ian Collins <ian-news@hotmail.com> - 2011-11-15 08:28 +1300
        Re: Typecasting Pointers on a 64 bit System James Kuyper <jameskuyper@verizon.net> - 2011-11-14 14:48 -0500
          Re: Typecasting Pointers on a 64 bit System Ian Collins <ian-news@hotmail.com> - 2011-11-15 10:15 +1300
            Re: Typecasting Pointers on a 64 bit System jacob navia <jacob@spamsink.net> - 2011-11-14 22:18 +0100
              Re: Typecasting Pointers on a 64 bit System Ian Collins <ian-news@hotmail.com> - 2011-11-15 10:26 +1300
            Re: Typecasting Pointers on a 64 bit System James Kuyper <jameskuyper@verizon.net> - 2011-11-14 16:46 -0500
              Re: Typecasting Pointers on a 64 bit System Ian Collins <ian-news@hotmail.com> - 2011-11-15 10:58 +1300
                Re: Typecasting Pointers on a 64 bit System James Kuyper <jameskuyper@verizon.net> - 2011-11-14 17:15 -0500
                Re: Typecasting Pointers on a 64 bit System blp@cs.stanford.edu (Ben Pfaff) - 2011-11-14 14:18 -0800
                Re: Typecasting Pointers on a 64 bit System Ian Collins <ian-news@hotmail.com> - 2011-11-15 11:29 +1300
                Re: Typecasting Pointers on a 64 bit System James Kuyper <jameskuyper@verizon.net> - 2011-11-14 18:14 -0500
                Re: Typecasting Pointers on a 64 bit System Seebs <usenet-nospam@seebs.net> - 2011-11-14 23:01 +0000
                Re: Typecasting Pointers on a 64 bit System Phil Carmody <thefatphil_demunged@yahoo.co.uk> - 2011-11-16 10:39 +0200
                Re: Typecasting Pointers on a 64 bit System Seebs <usenet-nospam@seebs.net> - 2011-11-16 20:18 +0000
                Re: Typecasting Pointers on a 64 bit System Fritz Wuehler <fritz@spamexpire-201111.rodent.frell.theremailer.net> - 2011-11-17 02:54 +0100
                Re: Typecasting Pointers on a 64 bit System pete <pfiland@mindspring.com> - 2011-11-16 21:29 -0500
                Re: Typecasting Pointers on a 64 bit System Seebs <usenet-nospam@seebs.net> - 2011-11-17 02:31 +0000
                Re: Typecasting Pointers on a 64 bit System Phil Carmody <thefatphil_demunged@yahoo.co.uk> - 2011-11-18 14:31 +0200
                Re: Typecasting Pointers on a 64 bit System Kaz Kylheku <kaz@kylheku.com> - 2011-11-17 02:44 +0000
                Re: Typecasting Pointers on a 64 bit System Joe Pfeiffer <pfeiffer@cs.nmsu.edu> - 2011-11-16 21:33 -0700
                Re: Typecasting Pointers on a 64 bit System "io_x" <a@b.c.invalid> - 2011-11-17 04:01 +0100
                Re: Typecasting Pointers on a 64 bit System blmblm@myrealbox.com <blmblm.myrealbox@gmail.com> - 2011-11-17 15:46 +0000
                Re: Typecasting Pointers on a 64 bit System Seebs <usenet-nospam@seebs.net> - 2011-11-17 18:48 +0000
                Re: Typecasting Pointers on a 64 bit System blmblm@myrealbox.com <blmblm.myrealbox@gmail.com> - 2011-11-18 14:48 +0000
                Re: Typecasting Pointers on a 64 bit System Ian Collins <ian-news@hotmail.com> - 2011-11-15 14:37 +1300
                Re: Typecasting Pointers on a 64 bit System Phil Carmody <thefatphil_demunged@yahoo.co.uk> - 2011-11-16 10:23 +0200
                Re: Typecasting Pointers on a 64 bit System James Kuyper <jameskuyper@verizon.net> - 2011-11-16 06:53 -0500
                Re: Typecasting Pointers on a 64 bit System James Kuyper <jameskuyper@verizon.net> - 2011-11-16 11:15 -0500
                Re: Typecasting Pointers on a 64 bit System Ben Bacarisse <ben.usenet@bsb.me.uk> - 2011-11-16 17:08 +0000
                Re: Typecasting Pointers on a 64 bit System Phil Carmody <thefatphil_demunged@yahoo.co.uk> - 2011-11-18 15:09 +0200
                Re: Typecasting Pointers on a 64 bit System Phil Carmody <thefatphil_demunged@yahoo.co.uk> - 2011-11-18 14:24 +0200
                Re: Typecasting Pointers on a 64 bit System James Kuyper <jameskuyper@verizon.net> - 2011-11-18 10:08 -0500
                Re: Typecasting Pointers on a 64 bit System Phil Carmody <thefatphil_demunged@yahoo.co.uk> - 2011-11-18 17:52 +0200
            Re: Typecasting Pointers on a 64 bit System Joe Pfeiffer <pfeiffer@cs.nmsu.edu> - 2011-11-14 15:45 -0700
  Re: Typecasting Pointers on a 64 bit System "christian.bau" <christian.bau@cbau.wanadoo.co.uk> - 2011-11-10 15:19 -0800
    Re: Typecasting Pointers on a 64 bit System Kaz Kylheku <kaz@kylheku.com> - 2011-11-10 23:41 +0000
      Re: Typecasting Pointers on a 64 bit System Keith Thompson <kst-u@mib.org> - 2011-11-10 20:48 -0800
      Re: Typecasting Pointers on a 64 bit System "christian.bau" <christian.bau@cbau.wanadoo.co.uk> - 2011-11-14 03:39 -0800
        Re: Typecasting Pointers on a 64 bit System Lauri Alanko <la@iki.fi> - 2011-11-14 13:08 +0000
          Re: Typecasting Pointers on a 64 bit System James Kuyper <jameskuyper@verizon.net> - 2011-11-14 09:21 -0500
        Re: Typecasting Pointers on a 64 bit System Keith Thompson <kst-u@mib.org> - 2011-11-14 12:54 -0800

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