Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!usc!samsung!munnari.oz.au!metro!wolfen!hls0!george
From: george@hls0.hls.oz (George Turczynski)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: Array bounds checking with C????
Summary: `C' is fine just as it is.
Message-ID: <856@hls0.hls.oz>
Date: 30 Aug 90 01:04:04 GMT
References: <7611@ucdavis.ucdavis.edu>
Lines: 34

In article <7611@ucdavis.ucdavis.edu>, kuan@iris.ucdavis.edu (Frank [Who me?] Kuan) writes:
> 
> 	Why is it that most C compilers don't seem to support this
> 	nifty little feature?

Because most C compilers assume you know what you're doing :-)

> 	I'm working on a large project, and two of the worst debugging
> 	nightmares I've had were due to memory being overwritten from
> 	over indexing an array.

Array bounds, along with typos,  should be one of the first things you
check when looking for (discrete) bugs, though I guess you know that
now !
 
> 	I was thinking about writing some kind of preprocessor to
> 	check for this. Has anyone already written something like
> 	this?

What is it that you want ?  Something to check your array indexing
variables at compile-time ?  In most cases, this is _possible_, but in
others it's impossible.  If you want code generated to check array
indexing at run-time, then your code will run slower, which is why
C compilers don't do it.  We want the fastest possible code we can
get !

If you want these sorts of features, use PASCAL :-)
 
-- 
| George P. J. Turczynski.          |---------------------------------------------------- 
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