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From: steve@taumet.com (Stephen Clamage)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: C language book recommendations
Message-ID: <741@taumet.com>
Date: 22 May 91 15:46:38 GMT
References: <1991May6.101403.1@mscf.med.upenn.edu> <36770001@hpopd.pwd.hp.com> <1991May21.125840.12654@ccu.umanitoba.ca>
Organization: Taumetric Corporation, San Diego
Lines: 32

rpjday@ccu.umanitoba.ca writes:

>>>  C: A Reference Manual 3rd Edition
>>>  Samuel P Harbison & Guy L Steele Jr
>>>  Prentice Hall

>Even the occasional annoying typo doesn't detract much.
>What typo?  Glad you asked.

>On [page 94], in a table showing the legalities of
>various declarations in various models, we read that

>extern int x = 0 ;

>in the omitted storage class model is treated as a reference.
>However, according to the explanation on p. 93, this should
>be illegal.  Comments?

Look over the material again.  In their book, H&S are not presenting only
ANSI C.  They are trying to cover the range of C implementations which have
been at all widely used.  If you have to write code for a variety of C
implementations, or understand some moldy old code written for some
system you do not have access to, this book will help.  It explains all
the common things which have been done, and how you can get your code
to work.

As to your specific example, it is clearly marked in the table as
"illegal" for typical C implementations, and "Don't use" under
the "recommendation" column.
-- 

Steve Clamage, TauMetric Corp, steve@taumet.com