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From: gwyn@brl-smoke.ARPA (Doug Gwyn )
Newsgroups: net.lang.c
Subject: Re: Questions about C on a Prime (primix)
Message-ID: <2023@brl-smoke.ARPA>
Date: Sun, 23-Mar-86 18:38:56 EST
Article-I.D.: brl-smok.2023
Posted: Sun Mar 23 18:38:56 1986
Date-Received: Tue, 25-Mar-86 05:22:50 EST
References: <988@plus5.UUCP> <325@hadron.UUCP>
Reply-To: gwyn@brl.ARPA
Organization: Ballistic Research Lab (BRL)
Lines: 23

In article <325@hadron.UUCP> jsdy@hadron.UUCP (Joseph S. D. Yao) writes:
>In article <988@plus5.UUCP> hokey@plus5.UUCP (Hokey) writes:
>>I was told that their C port keeps the 8th bit *on* for all ascii characters.
>>This seems kind of strange.  Near as I can tell, this means the following
>>code fragment won't work:
>>	strcpy(dst, src)
>>	    char *dst;
>>	    char *src; {
>>		while(*dst++ = *src++) ;
>>		return;}
>I've never really liked this kind of code:  it always seemed to me
>to be assuming something that, someday, on some weird machine, would
>fail.  Surprise!
>My rule is to always use an explicit reference to a defined constant:
>	while ((*dst+= = *src++) != NUL);
>This way, if my character set changes, I worry about this less.  By
>the way, will your P**** machine take a constant like
>	#define NUL	'\0'
>and turn it into an eighth-high character?

No, the NUL terminator (both in practice and as you #define it)
will be a 0-valued byte.  The original code, although ugly, is
correct.