confusion on globals, externals?
rcd at opus.UUCP
rcd at opus.UUCP
Sat Jun 16 14:58:02 AEST 1984
On a tangent from the external-variable discussion...
>He's made the same mistake as several people that sent mail to me
>privately: he has confused the words "external" and "global". I did
>not say "global variables are bad", I said "external variables are bad".
>I never said that variables with longer lifetimes than a single function
>invocation are a poor idea...
We've got confused terminology here. "Global" refers to scope (visibility)
of a variable, not to extent (lifetime). It means, roughly, "visible
everywhere" just as the name indicates. "External" also refers to scope;
it means, in C terms, a variable defined in another module. Given the
scoping rules for C, an external variable IS global.
I believe that the intent was to point out that the problem lies in the
global visibility, not in the static allocation. I agree here; the need
for global variables is fairly rare and they do admit the possibility of
misuse.
--
Dick Dunn {hao,ucbvax,allegra}!nbires!rcd (303)444-5710 x3086
...Cerebus for dictator!
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