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From: robison@m.cs.uiuc.edu
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc
Subject: Re: Relationship between C and C++
Message-ID: <5200048@m.cs.uiuc.edu>
Date: 20 Mar 90 01:39:37 GMT
References: <8432@hubcap.clemson.edu>
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Nf-ID: #R:hubcap.clemson.edu:8432:m.cs.uiuc.edu:5200048:000:817
Nf-From: m.cs.uiuc.edu!robison    Mar 19 14:56:00 1990


>     I strongly disagree with this approach if the goal is to obtain software
> quality. Take pointer arithmetic, for example. I would contend that you can
> have quality software, or you can have pointer arithmetic; but you cannot
> have both...

This is not the first attack on pointer arithmetic that I have seen.
Why is pointer arithmetic denigrated so much?  The C-style pointer
arithmetic seems to me to implement a fairly simple abstraction,
roughly equivalent to ``a tape and a read/write head.''
Most C implementations do not do bounds checking on pointers, 
but I fail to see why pointer arithmetic is inherently evil.

Can anyone clue me as to the basis for pointer paranoia?

Arch D. Robison
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

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