NetNews Offline 2/NetNews Offline Volume 2.iso/news/comp/lang/c-part1/4680

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

Path: mail2news.demon.co.uk!genesis.demon.co.uk
From: Lawrence Kirby <[e-mail]>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: simple code, argc, argv, strcmp()
Date: Tue, 06 Feb 96 14:04:25 GMT
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References: <11f7cc$17261a.3b3@daprez> <4etj7c$[e-mail]> <[e-mail]> <4f0rjn$[e-mail]>
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In article <4f0rjn$[e-mail]> [e-mail] "John R Buchan" writes:

>You are correct, of course.  Stupidity on my part. I tend to get careless
>about strcmp's reverse logic (ie returns False, when the strings match), when
>I am not paying attention (not an excuse, just an explanation).  I normally
>compare the return value to 0, just to keep myself straight.


That's the point though - strcmp() simply doesn't return a boolean value so
saying 'ie returns False' is just plain wrong and is what gets you into
trouble. strcmp() is in some sense more like a difference operation. e.g.
(ignoring overflow) if you take 2 integers a and b and calculate a-b the
result is >0 if a is larger, ==0 if they are equal and <0 if a is smaller,
just as strcmp(sa,sb) is defined. IMHO the definition of strcmp is quite
natural (but maybe the name doesn't quite reflect that definition).

--
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Lawrence Kirby | [e-mail]
Wilts, England | [e-mail]
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