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From: djfiander@watnot.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: Value of x?
Message-ID: <12760@watnot.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 1-Apr-87 13:50:16 EST
Article-I.D.: watnot.12760
Posted: Wed Apr  1 13:50:16 1987
Date-Received: Fri, 3-Apr-87 06:07:22 EST
References: <6570@brl-adm.ARPA> <705@brl-sem.ARPA>
Reply-To: djfiander@watnot.UUCP (David Fiander)
Organization: U. of Waterloo, Ontario
Lines: 26

>> In the Microsoft C compiler V4.0, '\x' is compiled as 0 on the
>> grounds that it's a brain-damaged version of '\x00'.  This is what
>> Microsoft's support group said when I reported what I thought was a 
>> bug.  I claim that '\x' is a perfectly fine representation of the 
>> character x and should have value 120 base 10.  How sayeth INFO-C?
>
>Neither \x meaning 0 nor \x meaning 'x' is correct.  There is no meaning
>to \x and those who use it are asking for trouble.  By your own admission
>\n should be the character n which we all know is not true.

I hate to say this, the first of you is more right.
According to K&R (which admittedly may no longer be correct) if a '\' is
followed by something which is not a valid escape sequence, the '\' is 
ignored, so the first posting has a valid complaint.  This came up here
with one of the University's C compilers.  They changed it to react in the
K&R manner, but give a compile time warning that something was wrong.
I tend to agree that '\x' is an 'x' and not a 0.  If I wanted 0 then I would
say '\x00' (well '\0').

-- 
"I don't want to achieve immortality through my work.
I want to achieve immortality through not dying"
	- Woody Allen

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