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- Path: solon.com!not-for-mail
- From: seebs@solutions.solon.com (Peter Seebach)
- Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
- Subject: Re: Dangling pointer?
- Date: 19 Apr 1996 00:25:53 -0500
- Organization: Usenet Fact Police (Undercover)
- Message-ID: <4l7851$3gb@solutions.solon.com>
- References: <4l0r4b$jte@dewey.csun.edu> <4l33dcINN8ms@keats.ugrad.cs.ubc.ca> <829849901snz@genesis.demon.co.uk> <4l6d83INN52t@keats.ugrad.cs.ubc.ca>
- Reply-To: seebs@solon.com
- NNTP-Posting-Host: solutions.solon.com
-
- In article <4l6d83INN52t@keats.ugrad.cs.ubc.ca>,
- Kazimir Kylheku <c2a192@ugrad.cs.ubc.ca> wrote:
- >>> "I want to quickly get this message out"
-
- >>>is perfectly grammatical.
-
- >>It depends on the grammar rules you are using.
-
- Certainly. I'd say "I want to get this message out quickly.".
-
- (Note: I use hacker quotation consciously; standard English quotation
- rules are broken.)
-
- >But saying or writing ``I want quickly to get this message out'', or ``I want
- >to get quickly this message out'', is not something a native speaker of English
- >would recognize as grammatical, or utter (except as a mistake).
-
- Correct.
-
- >Yet people would accept ``...to quickly get...'' without a second thought.
-
- It would bother me, as a split infinitive, and as what I consider a
- confusing usage.
-
- >On the other hand, prescriptive rules for how one ought to speak or write are
- >a different matter altogether. There is no justifiable reason to not split an
- >infinitive (as I just did, what do you know!), other than someone's arbitrary
- >idea on what constitutes ``good'' writing.
-
- It may not be an entirely arbitrary idea.
-
- >It is somewhat like if someone told
- >you not to write i[a] in C, or to not write int const a because the const
- >really _ought_ to be written first, and the integral expression really ought
- >to be the thing in the square brackets, because it is ``proper'' style.
-
- Right. And I would regard it as good advice. It's not legally binding,
- but it makes a good coding standard; likewise, the splitting of infinitives
- is a likely target for an English standard.
-
- >If you want to address certain kinds of audiences, you benefit from following
- >these rules for various ``levels'' of speaking or writing: colloquial,
- >informal, formal, and so on. I've heard left-wing linguist types refer to
- >these as ``socio-economically preferred dialects''. They clearly have their
- >place, but are useless as a guide to the syntax of a language.
-
- I've found that very few people are offended by correct usage, on issues
- like that. They're a good guide to eloquent speech in a given language.
- The analogy would be a coding standard; not required for communication,
- but very helpful for clear and effective communication.
-
- >Right. I've heard this referred to before as a dangling pointer. Though
- >sometimes the word is also used to denote syntactic ambiguities (``dangling
- >else'' in an if/then).
-
- I'm still entirely unsure which of N+1 likely meanings was meant for
- 'dangling pointer'. I would like to know what the original poster was
- looking for.
-
- -s
- --
- Peter Seebach - seebs@solon.com - Copyright 1996 Peter Seebach.
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