Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!sun-barr!rutgers!cmcl2!lanl!jlg
From: jlg@lanl.gov (Jim Giles)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc
Subject: Re: Answers, Chapter 1: TeX (was C's sins... and others)
Message-ID: <5074@lanl.gov>
Date: 6 Nov 90 19:40:33 GMT
References: <1845:Nov607:02:2390@kramden.acf.nyu.edu>
Organization: Los Alamos Natl Lab, Los Alamos, N.M.
Lines: 19

From article <1845:Nov607:02:2390@kramden.acf.nyu.edu>, by brnstnd@kramden.acf.nyu.edu (Dan Bernstein):
> In article <3681@lanl.gov> jlg@lanl.gov (Jim Giles) writes:
>> [... pointers not reliable across segments ...]
> 
> This statement is unjustified. It is, in fact, false. I am told that at
> least one C IBM PC memory manager keeps track of memory separately in
> each segment.

Exactly my point, pointers are presumably being used _within_
segments, but they are not adequate for writing the _whole_ memory
manager - something else must be in use to track the segments.

However, you are missing my point here.  In this one particular case
I actually _support_ the use of pointers (or some form of unbounded
address arithmetic).  I oppose the above mentioned ANSI C constraint
on pointers because the ability to do unbounded address calculations
was the only use I thought they were fit for.

J. Giles