Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!lll-winken!lll-lcc!ames!husc6!necntc!drilex!dricej
From: dricej@drilex.UUCP (Craig Jackson)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: Power proposal for ANSI C
Message-ID: <434@drilex.UUCP>
Date: 17 Jan 88 23:37:08 GMT
References: <38384@sun.uucp> <3573@sdcc6.ucsd.EDU>
Reply-To: dricej@drilex.UUCP (Craig Jackson)
Organization: Data Resources/McGraw-Hill, Lexington, MA
Lines: 23
Summary: a+++b ain't the only ambiguity

As a side note to this discussion: many people have put the famous
a+++b as one of the few seemingly ambiguous parts of C.  But a few years
ago, a colleague of mine found a bigger one: dividing by a de-referenced 
pointer:

{
   double a,b,*pc;

   . . . Give everything values

   a = b/*c;

   . . . rest of program

}

My friend spent two days looking for that one...'fortutunately', he didn't
comment the rest of the code, so he did get an 'unexpected EOF' message.
Just think of how long it would have taken to find the problem in
well-commented code.
-- 
Craig Jackson
UUCP: {harvard!axiom,linus!axiom,ll-xn}!drilex!dricej
BIX:  cjackson