HARRIS FLAME Re: SHORT vs. INT

[Todd Olson]

In article <2778 at sun.uucp> guy at sun.uucp (Guy Harris) writes:
>People who use the C language should be sufficiently expert that they
>understand that "long" and "short" should not be selected in favor of "int"

    I follow you so far ...

>only if they are of different sizes on the machine you're coding on.

    But I can't quite fiqure out what you mean here.  Does it mean that is
  if 'short' 'int' and 'long' are the same size then I should choose
  something other than 'int'?

>Period.  If a C programmer doesn't understand that, then they have not been
>adequately trained in the C language and should not use the C language until
>they have been so trained. 
> ...
>In any case, net.lang.c should *not* be forced to serve as a place where
>people pick up information that should have been imparted to them when they
>learned C but wasn't.  The proper use of "short", "int", and "long" very
>definitely falls into "what you should have learned before you started to
>use C". 
> ...
>	Guy Harris


    Some of us have not been formally trained to program in C. 
    Some of us, out of curiosity, desire to use something "better" than
  fortran, or other reason, have taught ourselves C by reading K&R and
  writing programs.
    Some of us work in environments where everyone else just wants to get the
  job done without spending time to aquire more than the minimal skills
  necessary 'make it run',
		(even if what they write will be use again, or
  		 with some thought could be made to handle a
		 class of (frequently encountered) problems rather
		 than just a special case)
  and thus have no one to talk these problems over with.
    Some of us are not able to devote all our time to working with 
  computers because we have other professions.
    Some of us do not have access to more than one machine and thus, though
  we'd like to write portably, have know way of experimantally finding out
  what is and is not portable.
    Some of us are not system programmers though we are trying to be, on top
  of our other activities because no one else in our (physics) department
  is interested in making the machine work. Just that it *@$ better work.

    None the less we are interested in creating good, well written
  programs.  We are interested in pushing ourselves beyond our previous
  best to do better this time.

 
    Understandable, from your point of view, it is bothersome to have 
  to deal with our mistakes time and again, or to wade through them in the net.
  If you will occasionally help us (and otherwise ignore us) I will try very
  hard to think my questions and apparent bugs through before soliciting
  your aid.

    One explaination is worth a thousand flames.


-- 
Todd Olson

ARPA: olson at lasspvax  -- or --  olson%lasspvax at cu-arpa.cs.cornell.edu
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