Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!taumet!steve
From: steve@taumet.com (Stephen Clamage)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: extern char *foo vs. extern char foo[]
Keywords: by reference, by value, arrays
Message-ID: <247@taumet.com>
Date: 6 Jun 90 15:45:51 GMT
References: <1990May30.001219.23564@uunet!unhd> <6263@wolfen.cc.uow.oz> <16788@haddock.ima.isc.com> <6273@wolfen.cc.uow.oz>
Reply-To: steve@taumet.UUCP (Stephen Clamage)
Organization: Taumetric Corporation, San Diego
Lines: 12

In article <6273@wolfen.cc.uow.oz> pejn@wolfen.cc.uow.edu.au (Paul Nulsen) writes:
>My argument is not that there is internal inconsistency in the treatment of
>arrays by C.

Ah, but there is an internal inconsistency.  The problem is that in C,
arrays are not first-class data types.  As you note, there are
contexts in which a mention of an array is converted to a pointer to
its first element, and contexts in which this does not occur.  By me,
that's inconsistent, and is also the source of all the confusion.
-- 

Steve Clamage, TauMetric Corp, steve@taumet.com