Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!aplcen!uakari.primate.wisc.edu!dali.cs.montana.edu!milton!unicorn!n8742883
From: n8742883@unicorn.WWU.EDU (Perry Pederson)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: Laser C function call help needed!  (slightly long)
Keywords: Laser C, help!
Message-ID: <1213@unicorn.WWU.EDU>
Date: 12 Jul 90 08:40:18 GMT
Reply-To: n8742883@unicorn.WWU.EDU (Perry Pederson)
Organization: Western Washington Univ, Bellingham, WA
Lines: 75


I have just purchased Laser C, and after a week of book hunting was
able to purchase a copy of "The C Programming Language", second
edition, by B. Kernighan and D. Ritchie.  I was advised to buy this
book as I was told it was the "bible" for C.  I was learning a lot of
the basic functions of C and having a pretty good time learning the
language until I hit the section on functions.

	It appears to me that Laser C is _not_ ANSI compatible, which
really burns me.  I got massive syntax errors when I tried to compile
a simple function.  The next page (p.26) the authors showed a "note of
history" where "The biggest change between ANSI C and earlier versions
is how functions are declared and defined...." and gave an example of 
a function "would have been written" in the older versions of C.  I
wrote the old version in and it compiled and ran perfectly.

	Satisfied that I could overcome a small syntactical problem
with the language, I went off to the next example which has an array
passed to a function, and the function returns an integer value.  The
compiler hated it. I have tried for an hour to juggle the syntax
around, but it still won't compile at all.  The algorithm is as
follows as per the book:

/* getline: read a line into s, return length */

int getline(char s[], int lim)
{
	int c,i;

	for (i=0; i<lim-1 && (c = getchar())!=EOF && c!='\n'; ++i)
		s[i] = c;
	if (c == '\n') {
		s[i] = c;
		++i;
	}
	s[i] = '\O';
	return i;
}

	The Laser C compiler screams bloody murder on the first line;
It insists that there is a missing ')', missing ';', and then declares
that there is an invalid function.  I have tried to 'mimic' their
example of 'older' versions of C programming by declaring the
variables under the function declaration and removed the beginning
'int', thus reading:


/* getline; read a line into s, return length */

getline(s, lim)
char s[], int lim;
{
  etc. etc. etc. 
}


	but the compiler still tells me that the function is declared
wrong, and that the 'char s[], int lim' line is redefining what 's' and
'lim' were in the first place.

	First question:  How does one pass variables to a function in
Laser C, and how do you declare that the function will return a
certain type?

	Second question: Is there a Laser C upgrade which meets the
ANSI standards?  I have heard a lot of good stuff about this language
and find it hard to believe that it does not meet a standard that was
set over two years ago.

	My apologies if I've been verbose with my problem;  I wanted
to insure that I was specific in defining it.

		Thanx in advance to any Laser C 'experts' out there!

			Perry Pederson    n8742883@unicorn.WWU.EDU