NetNews Offline 2/NetNews Offline Volume 2.iso/news/comp/lang/c++-part2/10843

Internet Message Format | 1996-08-05 | 1.6 KB

Path: watnews.watson.ibm.com!ncohen
From: [e-mail] (Norman H. Cohen)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada,comp.lang.c,comp.lang.c++
Subject: Re: C/C++ knocks the crap out of Ada
Date: 11 Mar 1996 14:40:14 GMT
Organization: IBM T.J. Watson Research Center
Distribution: world
Message-ID: <4i1e0e$[e-mail]>
References: <4h5hgj$[e-mail]> <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]>
Reply-To: [e-mail]
NNTP-Posting-Host: rios8.watson.ibm.com

In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail]
(Andrew Koenig) says of the C standard:

...
|>              It defines what a range error is, then leaves it up to the
|> implementation to check for it or not.  Most, but not all, C implementations
|> don't bother to check, partly because checking is expensive at run time.

And partly because there is too much production C code out there that
would fail these checks.

In some cases the violation of the ANSI rules is deliberate.  Either the
programmer did not know that what he was doing violated the ANSI rules,
or he knew but he didn't care, because it worked with the compiler he was
using.

In some cases the violation of the ANSI rules is accidental.  The
programmer does not intend to index an array out of bounds but does so by
mistake and is not caught.  Nonetheless, the program SEEMS to work, and
the programmer would consider it a disservice if the implementation were
"improved" to catch the error, since this would appear to break a program
that had been working.

--
Norman H. Cohen    [e-mail]