Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!cme!libes
From: libes@cme.nbs.gov (Don Libes)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: Zero Length Arrays Allowed in C Standard?
Message-ID: <2178@muffin.cme.nbs.gov>
Date: 3 Dec 89 16:00:54 GMT
References: <2298@jato.Jpl.Nasa.Gov> <11715@smoke.BRL.MIL> <5486@sdcc6.ucsd.edu> <563@s5.Morgan.COM>
Reply-To: libes@cme.nist.gov (Don Libes)
Organization: National Institute of Standards and Technology
Lines: 35

In article <563@s5.Morgan.COM> amull@Morgan.COM (Andrew P. Mullhaupt) writes:
>in empty arrays. There is a long, long litany of 'empty array'
>jokes, like the following:
>
>
>
>Later,
>Andrew Mullhaupt

That's rather feeble.  Here are some better ones (pulled out of an old
Quote Quad that I'm embarrassed to admit still haunts my shelves).
They aren't gutbusters, but they do illustrate the point.

A woman gets on a bus with three sets of twins.
Driver: Gosh, lady, do you always get twins?
Woman: Not always - hundreds of times we don't get anything at all.

Patient: Doctor, have you got a cure for complete loss of voice?
Doctor: Good morning, can I help you?

Archaeologist: My research shows that the ancient Egyptians knew all
about wireless radio.
Reporter: That's astounding!  How did you determine that.
Archaeologist: In all my investigations, I never found any wire.

Amazingly, there is even one about empty arrays themselves:

Q: How many empty arrays does it take to fill all of memory.
A: One, if it's big enough.

(To appreciate this last one, it helps to know that APL 2 arrays
require structural information at run-time that can be arbitrarily
large.)

Don Libes          libes@cme.nist.gov      ...!uunet!cme-durer!libes