Floating exception bug

[Larry Jones]

In article <1675 at viper.Lynx.MN.Org>, dave at viper.Lynx.MN.Org (David Messer)
writes [about his buggy code]:
> I've had many people point out to me (in boring detail :-) that the problem
> is an inconsistent declaration.  Of course that is the problem!  What is
> unacceptable to me is that a function in a _library_, whose definition
> I may not of known, caused a problem which only showed up much later
> in the execution of the program.  If I hadn't had the source to the
> function in question, I never would've found it.
> 
> The program in question has compiled and executed correctly for many
> years on a variety of UNIX systems -- it should've compiled and
> executed correctly on Microport.

Well, gee, officer, I've run that stop sign every day for the
past five years and you've never given me a ticket before!

Just because something happens to work BY ACCIDENT on some system
(or even on lots of systems) doesn't make it correct.  The code
is wrong and Microport has no obligation to try to make buggy
code work.  Library routines should have associated headers which
declare them correctly so that users can include the header and
get a correct declaration without having to know what it is.  If
they don't, beat up whoever wrote the library routines.  If they
do and the user didn't use them, beat up the user.

----
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