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From: vegdahl@ogicse.cse.ogi.edu (Steve Vegdahl)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: shared storage for string literals?
Message-ID: <21996@ogicse.ogi.edu>
Date: 28 May 91 19:51:29 GMT
Sender: vegdahl@ogicse.ogi.edu
Organization: Oregon Graduate Institute (formerly OGC), Beaverton, OR
Lines: 20

The ANSI standard states that two identical string literals may share storage.
Thus, whether the execution of the block:
  { char *a = "hello";
    char *b = "hello";
    printf("%s", a==b ? "YES" : "NO");
  }
prints "YES" is depends on the implementation.

Question: can non-identical substrings share storage if one is a substring
of the other, and they share a common "tail"?  In other words, is it legal
for an implementation to print "YES" when executing the following block:
  { char *a = "Say hello";
    char *b = "hello";
    printf("%s", (a+4)==b ? "YES" : "NO");
  }

I find nothing in the standard that gives a definitive answer to this question.

		Steve Vegdahl
		Adaptive Solutions, Inc.