Xref: utzoo comp.unix.sysv386:8270 comp.lang.c:39443
Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!usc!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!wuarchive!hsdndev!cmcl2!adm!smoke!gwyn
From: gwyn@smoke.brl.mil (Doug Gwyn)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.sysv386,comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: time(0L) - history of a misconception
Message-ID: <16221@smoke.brl.mil>
Date: 22 May 91 01:04:24 GMT
References: <1991May14.040042.15199@jpradley.jpr.com> <588@sherpa.UUCP> <1141@mwtech.UUCP>
Followup-To: comp.unix.sysv386
Organization: U.S. Army Ballistic Research Laboratory, APG, MD.
Lines: 13

In article <1141@mwtech.UUCP> martin@mwtech.UUCP (Martin Weitzel) writes:
>>	long seed = time(0L);
>I'm curious if anybody has ideas from where this misconception originated.

The roots of many such errors are probably unknown even to the original
culprits.

In this particular case, my best guess is that the common "time(0)" usage
was "repaired" during port to a system where it mattered, and the person
doing the repair was thinking merely of the required representation for
the argument to work right, not more abstractly in terms of its type.
You can see this also in the common
	#define	NULL	0L