Bug in ANSI C??

[Dick Flanagan]

In article <2118 at bsu-cs.UUCP> dhesi at bsu-cs.UUCP (Rahul Dhesi) writes:
>In article <241 at oracle.UUCP> rbradbur at oracle.UUCP (Robert Bradbury) writes:
>>On another note; does everyone realize that the current standard allows
>>the results of the str/memcmp() function to be implementation defined
>>if the characters being compared have the high-bit set?
>
>You mean that I can have two identical strings with high bits set, and
>strcmp() could return something other than 0?

No.  Equal is equal.

>Or does the problem lie only in deciding lexical order?

The problem lies in that the developer of the run-time routines is free
to decide that strcmp() is comparing *signed* eight-bit numbers, so that
any character with the high-bit set is considered to be *lower* than any
character with the high-bit off.  This would mean that the non-equal
returns could differ between one compiler and another.

>While we're on the subject, just what is the meaning of "implementation-
>defined"?

"Left to the discretion of the compiler run-time routine developer."

Dick

--
Dick Flanagan, W6OLD                         GEnie: FLANAGAN
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