Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!bellcore!faline!ulysses!allegra!mit-eddie!bloom-beacon!gatech!hao!ames!pasteur!ucbvax!unisoft!hoptoad!dasys1!wfp
From: wfp@dasys1.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: Language-induced errors
Message-ID: <2579@dasys1.UUCP>
Date: 16 Jan 88 06:17:28 GMT
References: <4668@pyr.gatech.EDU> <495@xyzzy.UUCP> <9930@mimsy.UUCP> <18515@bu-cs.BU.EDU>
Organization: The Big Electric Cat
Lines: 18
Posted: Sat Jan 16 01:17:28 1988

In article <18515@bu-cs.BU.EDU>, hen@bu-cs.BU.EDU (Bill Henneman) writes:
> Is my experience unique?  Is there something in the air in Boston that
> makes us immune to this sort of error? [referring to confusion of "="
and "=="].

You're probably right.  I've been working on a C++ project in Route 0x80-land
for the past four months (with weekend furloughs :-); I hadn't written any
appreciable amount of C for a few years previous to this, and never any C++,
but that is one mistake I haven't made yet on this project.  My little trick
was to tell myself "= means equals, but == means is equal to", or something
like that (not an entirely conscious process).  But I'm sure the air was the
major factor!


-- 
William Phillips                 {allegra,philabs,cmcl2}!phri\
Big Electric Cat Public Unix           {bellcore,cmcl2}!cucard!dasys1!wfp
New York, NY, USA                (-: Just say "NO" to OS/2! :-)