Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!mailrus!iuvax!silver!rschmidt From: rschmidt@silver.ucs.indiana.edu (roy schmidt) Newsgroups: comp.lang.c Subject: Re: Why does C hate 2d arrays? Keywords: The essence of C programming Message-ID: <45923@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu> Date: 28 May 90 15:32:19 GMT References: <16693@haddock.ima.isc.com> <5391@helios.TAMU.EDU> Sender: root@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu Organization: Indiana University, Bloomington IN. Lines: 22 In article <5391@helios.TAMU.EDU> john@stat.tamu.edu (John S. Price) writes: >In article asherman@dino.ulowell.edu (Aaron Sherman) writes: >>[stuff deleted] >> C needs variable length arrays. Anything else is just forcing work >>onto the programmer or the machine or both that should be the compiler's >>job. >> -AJS > >But, I ask again, why? There really isn't a need... > Exactly so! The price we pay for the fantastic flexibility which C gives us is the burden of doing such tasks ourselves. Sure, we could have the compiler do a lot of things, but for each of these, we would lose the opportunity to do it differently...and that is the essence of C! If you are fed up with this, then do it in BASIC! You can get away with murder in BASI ----------------------------------------------------------- ^ Roy Schmidt | #include | | Indiana University | /* They are _my_ thoughts, | | Graduate School of Business | and you can't have them, < > Bloomington | so there! */ X ___________________________________________________________ X