The importance of showing ALL of the code in C

On Thu, 7 Feb 2002, Ethan Dicks wrote: I agree. Even "stupid and suicidal" is not the same thing as illegal IN C! Folks, PLEASE be careful about attribution! The above quotes falsely attributes to me a statement that an "out of range" pointer can not be dereferenced. I did NOT say that! C has no objections to dereferencing pointers to garbage. You can put ANY RANDOM bit pattern into a pointer variable, and get garbage out. There is a presumption in many of these posts that "stupid and suicidal" is the same as illegal. C has NO compunctions about permitting you to do things that you really shouldn't do! If you want to say that one should NEVER do something, that's fine; but do NOT say that it is "illegal" in C. Non-portable assumptions are NOT illegal. Stupid, yes; but NOT illegal. A REAL C compiler does NOT have array bounds checking! Nor do any C compilers that are on-topic for this list. It certainly might be true that MICROS~1 might currently sell compilers that might protect you from your mistakes, or wrap you and your program in a safe cocoon, but that is contrary to the fundamental spirit of C. Even ANSI C does not adhere to K&R's basic spirit of C. It is one (of many) reasons why C is NOT necessarily the right language to use for some projects. "If you want to shoot yourself in the foot, a REAL C compiler will provide you with unlimited ammunition." -- Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin(a)xenosoft.com