C parsing : Significance of spaces

[John Carl Zeigler]

>

	Blaming the programmer vs. blaming C for
things like "a/*b" begs the question.   If you are good at your
job and take care writing code that is clean and
managible, then you wont have problems like "a/*b".

If you understand how the tools you use work, then you should
see something like "a/*b" as soon as you type it.

Of course, there is the occasional typo,  but that is not
what we are talking about.

If the tools you use enable you to produce better code, then they
are good tools.  If they do not make it easier to produce good code,
then they are bad tools.    I would list C in the former group
because it does allow you to produce good code (by any standard -
readibility, efficiency; perhaps not orthagonally).

The only caveat is that you must have a lot of experience
with C to really know how to take advantage of these things.


John Carl Zeigler
North Carolina State University