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From: gudeman@cs.arizona.edu (David Gudeman)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc
Subject: Re: Answers, Chapter 1: TeX (was C's sins... and others)
Message-ID: <26726@megaron.cs.arizona.edu>
Date: 23 Oct 90 22:48:21 GMT
Organization: U of Arizona CS Dept, Tucson
Lines: 21

In article  <3656@lanl.gov> jlg@lanl.gov (Jim Giles) writes:

]Of course, pointers and one dimensional arrays - in spite of their
]similarity - are indeed different.  For one thing: arrays are bounded.

You know, Jim, it doesn't help your argument any when you keep
bringing up the same points long after they have been discredited.
Pointers are bounded just like array indexes.  Yes, most
implementations of C don't check the bounds, but that is because in
the definition of the C language, run-time errors are generally
defined to produced undefined results.  You could easily change the
implementation and the language specification to produce error
messages on out-of-bounds references.  This is not a difference
between pointers and arrays, it is a difference between language
philosophies.  No doubt if C had true arrays, an out-of-bounds index
would produce undefined results just like out-of-bounds pointers.
-- 
					David Gudeman
Department of Computer Science
The University of Arizona        gudeman@cs.arizona.edu
Tucson, AZ 85721                 noao!arizona!gudeman