Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!bloom-beacon!usc!henry.jpl.nasa.gov!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!hacgate!ashtate!dbase!awd
From: awd@dbase.UUCP (Alastair Dallas)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.programmer
Subject: Re: Problem with LSC 4.0 debugger.
Summary: C is C, Pascal is Pascal
Message-ID: <244@dbase.UUCP>
Date: 22 Sep 89 18:58:40 GMT
References: <85031@pyramid.pyramid.com>
Distribution: na
Organization: Ashton Tate Devlopment Center Glendale, Calif.
Lines: 52

In article <85031@pyramid.pyramid.com>, bjb@pyramid.pyramid.com (Bruce Beare) writes:
> The think C 4.0 debugger is not able to show stack variables for
> functions that are 1 or more calling frames "up" the stack. 
>
>	<example deleted>
>
> This behavior of LSC's Debugger is silly. It has all of the information
> it needs - it knows the stack offset of WINDid (it can display it if
> we put a breakpoint in the function Cwindow:Iwindow - before calling 
> CheckResource), and it knows how to trace through the stack frames.
> It just doesn't bother to display the information.
> 
> I've discussed this with Think's support - Darell (sp?), and he has agreed
> that this "would be a useful feature" and might be looked at in a future
> release. My intention here is to raise the point for discussion and
> hopefully convince Think that it is a real deficiency that should be
> addressed soon.
> 
> Bruce Beare

Does the word 'scope' ring a bell here?  K&R, 1st Ed., p. 76:

"The scope of a name is the part of the program over which the name is
defined.  For an automatic variable declared at the beginning of a function,
the scope is the function in which the name is declared, and variables of 
the same name in different functions are unrelated.  The same is true of
the arguments of the function."

Darell's reaction sounds like good salesmanship, but it also demonstrates
why tech support doesn't write the software.

Maybe I'm being unnecessarily harsh, but how about a law that says that
before Symantec can sell someone a C compiler that that person has to 
demonstrate competency in the language.  No, I take it back--that's not
nice.  Scoping rules are a fairly advanced part of C and the issue is
further clouded by Pascal's nested blocks--that is:

	function what
	var x:integer
	
		function who
			GetResource(x)

In pascal, the debugger can tell you what 'x' is inside 'who'.  C just
doesn't work like that.  Let's move discussion of radical changes to
the C language out of this newsgroup (rec.humor?).

I'm sorry; I apologize in advance if I'm being offensive.  Call it my
mood today and the way this posting hit me.  I'll feel better after the
weekend.

/alastair/