Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!wuarchive!decwrl!megatest!djones
From: djones@megatest.UUCP (Dave Jones)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc
Subject: Re: Answers, Chapter 1: TeX (was C's sins... and others)
Message-ID: <14269@goofy.megatest.UUCP>
Date: 22 Oct 90 21:00:20 GMT
References: <66253@lanl.gov>
Organization: Megatest Corporation, San Jose, Ca
Lines: 11

From article <66253@lanl.gov>, by jlg@lanl.gov (Jim Giles):
> ... There are _NO_ pointers in
> the source code for TeX 'packed array tries'.  The code does everything
> through the use of Pascal arrays.

For theoretical considerations, an index into an array is not much
different from a pointer is it? Range-checking is the only significant
difference I can think of, and that only makes incorrect programs
fail nicer. (Pointers also have some measure of range-checking,
"segmentation violation" for example. Never happened to *me* of
course, but I've heard rumors.)