14 Nov
2003
14 Nov
'03
12:16 p.m.
-----Original Message-----
From: cctalk-bounces(a)classiccmp.org
[mailto:cctalk-bounces@classiccmp.org]On Behalf Of Tom Jennings
Sent: Friday, November 14, 2003 5:29 PM
To: cctalk(a)classiccmp.org
Subject: RE: 8086 (was Re: more talking to the press.)
On Fri, 2003-11-14 at 16:29, Patrick Rigney wrote:
Tom, I'll admit to being "Mr. Off-By-One-Error" myself. Daily. And twice
on Sunday. On the other hand, I've worked with many engineers who would
argue quite aggressively that if you intended to have only the byte at
"start" filled with zero, then you, the caller, should have specified
"end"
as start+1. Philosophically they believe, code that exists is always more
correct than code now being created. If it's older it must be thoroughly
tested and therefore correct. Some of these people are also private pilots;
I will not fly with them. --Patrick :-)
> void foofill(char *start,char *end)
...
yeah... and, I assume if you specify start and
end with the
same value, you
want that ONE byte filled with zero, so the test
should be:
while (start <= end)
Nicht war? --Patrick
All criticisms are correct, my only defense is that it was 'for
illustration purposes only' (sic).
But it also proves a point, no code is 'temporary', kludges last forever
to embarrass their authors and all code needs documentation :-)