Path: csiph.com!eternal-september.org!feeder.eternal-september.org!mx02.eternal-september.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail From: Keith Thompson Newsgroups: comp.lang.c Subject: Re: How to read a data file whose size is unknown in C? Date: Fri, 21 Aug 2015 19:35:28 -0700 Organization: None to speak of Lines: 69 Message-ID: References: <7b7a215a-b72a-48ba-bbdc-ddc22ad8c5b7@googlegroups.com> <07514fdc-ec24-4c0e-b280-cc626b8d0c9b@googlegroups.com> <305bb403-c869-4f2f-bf0d-39e1b0f10468@googlegroups.com> <271c85af-1480-4ee9-9102-9cab995c69a8@googlegroups.com> <629d31c7-2c94-48d3-b567-81fc041f7a5c@googlegroups.com> <55d78c72.14914812@news.xs4all.nl> <19583d3f-fb29-496b-8f45-df750bc222ac@googlegroups.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Injection-Info: mx02.eternal-september.org; posting-host="945944de09706c9b4e29b53c9d2efdc2"; logging-data="19172"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@eternal-september.org"; posting-account="U2FsdGVkX1+bJ0aXv8L2aSGReXG+eJd0" User-Agent: Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/23.1 (gnu/linux) Cancel-Lock: sha1:oeh2RMHXNucfzy8RC0yEZ1bXLCo= sha1:7RrHsTwXL58FLPV/heAWIajR6Os= Xref: csiph.com comp.lang.c:67973 David Kleinecke writes: > On Friday, August 21, 2015 at 1:39:57 PM UTC-7, Richard Bos wrote: >> David Kleinecke wrote: >> >> > On Wednesday, August 19, 2015 at 5:13:07 PM UTC-7, Keith Thompson wrote: >> >> > > The word "alphabet" is perhaps not the best choice for what you're >> > > trying to say. The word often refers to just letters; see for example, >> > > the isalpha() function. >> > >> > Alphabet is the usual word for whatever character ste a text is using. >> >> '.' and '(' are in your alphabet? > > Be careful here "text" includes a lot of things like Chinese writing > and Sumerian and Egyptian (see Unicode - they may even include the > figures on an Easter Island taking biard by now). I can guess that "taking biard" is a typo for something, but I have no idea for what. Moving on ... > The crucial attribute of a text is that it is a sequence of glyphs - > written in a book, carved on a rock, you name it). If presented with > a text I haven't seen before I count the different glyphs (not always > easy). The set of all different glyphs is the alphabet of the text. > The alphabet the C standard is thinking of contains the 91 glyphs > listed in 5.2.1 plus the space character. These 92 glyphs are encoded > as byte values in a way the standard leaves us to guess is what is > called the ANSII character set. The standard adds some byte values that > that are encoded by glyph pairs. > > My question was - is there a generally agree-upon name for these 92 > glyphs (incuding the blank glyph)? > > Note C would remain C if all the alphabet glyphs were re-arranged or > changed into diferent shapes. Your original question from upthread was: As elsewhere - a bag of tells. What's your name for the letters we actually use (hint: not printable)? I'll ignore the phrase "a bag of tells"; freel free to explain it if you like, but either way be aware I have no clue what it's supposed to mean. Your question, as stated, was absolutely unclear. Many of the characters it turns out you were referring to are not "letters", and I could only guess what you meant by letters "we actually use". I'm surprised it took you so long to clarify the question, which turns out to be a fairly simple one. The 92 characters in question are a subset of the "basic character set", specifically the printable characters (those for which isprint() would return a true value). I suppose you could call them something like the "printable basic character set". I know of no standard name for this set of characters, probably because there hasn't been much of a need for such a name. And I remind you again that your use of "alphabet" is potentially confusing, since the primary meaning of that word excludes digits and punctuation characters. The phrase "character set" seems to be exactly what you're referring to; why not use that? -- 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"