Obscure C code (was Re: Excessive optimization)

On Thu, Dec 2, 2010 at 9:02 PM, ben <bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca> wrote: I'm stumped as well. I'm not helped by the fact that I can't remember the specifics of the C standard library. Is the read function exactly called Read? If that's the case, maybe this is a forward declaration problem where the compiler picks the standard library function over the one in the code since it hasn't found the symbol yet? When I was working on my CS degree, about a half dozen of us were stumped by this one: int somefunction() { while(somevalue == true); { printf("test\n"); } } Like the one from brent, it's a little more obvious without all the extra code around the problem. The issue is that no matter what we put in the criteria, we'd get either exactly one "test", or the while loop would get stuck forever printing nothing. I finally did spot it after about a hour of staring at it. Maybe we would all have found it faster if it hadn't been 3 in the morning with us all pulling all-nighters to get the assignment done. brian