Something's Broken: was ... Re: tgetent

[Jay "you ignorant splut!" Maynard]

In article <19789 at watmath.waterloo.edu> rwwetmore at math.Uwaterloo.ca (Ross Wetmore) writes:
>  The assumption that pointers and ints are of equal length is the 
>problem, no? This is a fundamental assumption of the 'C' language, 
>if not an explicit requirement.

NO!!!!!
Before I let the wizards in comp.lang.c (Doug Gwyn, Chris Torek, Karl
Heuer, and Henry Spencer come immediately to mind) shred this statement,
I'll point a flame at it:

C does NOT require that pointers and integers be interchangeable. Any
attempt to do so is inherently non-portable.
That some folks (most notably, those from the school of "All the world's
a VAX running BSD") get away with that is a crying shame, for it makes
the rest of us have innumerable problems attempting to port their code.

>  It would be unfair to fault either the architecture, or compiler in
>this case. It just means the 'C' language was designed for a certain
>class of hardware and thus has limited use in its pristine (unkludged) 
>form.

You're right; the real blame lies with the (incompetent) programmer.

Both the language and the architecture do their job just fine, thank
you.
(Note to Peter: Me, defending C??!?!!)

-- 
Jay Maynard, EMT-P, K5ZC...>splut!< | Never ascribe to malice that which can
uucp:       uunet!nuchat!           | adequately be explained by stupidity.
   hoptoad!academ!uhnix1!splut!jay  +----------------------------------------
{killer,bellcore}!tness1!           | Birthright Party '88: let's get spaced!