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From: srt@LOCUS.UCLA.EDU.UUCP
Newsgroups: mod.computers.apollo
Subject: Movie Review & Cautionary Warning
Message-ID: <8608012045.AA13412@zeus.CS.UCLA.EDU>
Date: Fri, 1-Aug-86 16:45:57 EDT
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Posted: Fri Aug  1 16:45:57 1986
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"The Great Wall" is Peter Wang's ("Chan is Missing", "Dim Sum") most recent
film.  It concerns a Chines-American family's return to the mainland and
the comedy (and drama) that results.  It is quite a good film, in my opinion,
but what concerns this group is that in the background of one scene can be
spotted a DN300.  The first cameo in a major motion picture by an Apollo?

Also, I recently ran across a rather obscure problem in Pascal that I
thought I'd bring up.  I had an IF statement of the form:

        if ((p <> NIL) AND (link[p^.lp] = 0)) then ...

where the first test is "guard" to prevent a problem on the second.  Normally
this works - Pascal does the right thing and evaluates left to right - but
in this case, the compiler pulls the subscript reference outside the IF
form, causing an error.  In essence, it turns this into:

        x := p^.lp;
        if ((p <> NIL) AND (link[x] = 0)) then ...

A hard problem to catch.  The solution is to use nested IFs.

                                                -- Scott