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From: vinoski@apollo.HP.COM (Stephen Vinoski)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: C language book recommendations
Message-ID: <51df562d.20b6d@apollo.HP.COM>
Date: 30 May 91 13:52:00 GMT
References: <1991May6.101403.1@mscf.med.upenn.edu> <36770001@hpopd.pwd.hp.com> <1991May21.125840.12654@ccu.umanitoba.ca> <741@taumet.com> <1991May24.192404.29227@ccu.umanitoba.ca>
Sender: root@apollo.HP.COM
Reply-To: vinoski@apollo.HP.COM (Stephen Vinoski)
Organization: Hewlett-Packard Apollo Division - Chelmsford, MA
Lines: 29

In article <1991May24.192404.29227@ccu.umanitoba.ca> rpjday@ccu.umanitoba.ca writes:
>In article <741@taumet.com> steve@taumet.com (Stephen Clamage) writes:
>>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.
>
>  I don't have my 3rd ed. of H&S here, so I may very well 
>embarrass myself, but I think I checked out that section
>thoroughly enough to remember what it says.  I am aware that
>H&S are showing various compiler models.  They also quite
>CLEARLY say that one of them, the omitted storage class
>model, is what ANSI C uses.  Their definition of this model
>is what I have given above.  On the next page, they also 
>CLEARLY say that "extern int x = 0;" is not, as you claim,
>illegal, but that it is to be treated as a reference --
>that is, a referencing declaration.

The book definitely contradicts itself here.  I have reported the
problem to Sam Harbison.


-steve

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