Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ukma!gatech!ncar!umigw!steve
From: steve@umigw.MIAMI.EDU (steve emmerson)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: Array indexing vs. pointers...
Message-ID: <171@umigw.MIAMI.EDU>
Date: 6 Oct 88 12:35:12 GMT
References: <836@proxftl.UUCP| <3105@hubcap.UUCP> <1700@dataio.Data-IO.COM> <8630@smoke.ARPA> <10699@ulysses.homer.nj.att.com>
Reply-To: steve@umigw.miami.edu (steve emmerson)
Followup-To: comp.lang.c
Distribution: na
Organization: University of Miami
Lines: 28

In article <10699@ulysses.homer.nj.att.com> ggs@ulysses.homer.nj.att.com 
(Griff Smith) writes:
>   (void) fprintf(stderr, "\
>Usage:   sltread [options] input-drive-name\n\
>Options: [-l] [-s] [-v] [-x] [-z] [-t tape-volume-number]\n\
>         [-d dataset-name] [-n dataset-number]\n\
>         [-i ignore-count] [-r record-count]\n");
>
>I grant that this is vulnerable to code hackers and naive
>pretty-printers messing up the alignment.  On the other hand, it is
>easier to see how everything lines up.

Nonsense.  Use instead:
#define	EPUTS(msg)	(void)fputs(msg, stderr)
    EPUTS("Usage:   sltread [options] input-drive-name\n");
    EPUTS("Options: [-l] [-s] [-v] [-x] [-z] [-t tape-volume-number]\n");
    EPUTS("         [-d dataset-name] [-n dataset-number]\n");
    EPUTS("         [-i ignore-count] [-r record-count]\n");

This has all the advantages -- and none of the disadvantages -- of the other.
In ANSII-C you could even have the macro append the newline.

Don't write vulnerable code (at least not without *very* good reason).
-- 
Steve Emmerson                     Inet: steve@umigw.miami.edu [128.116.10.1]
SPAN: miami::emmerson (host 3074::)      emmerson%miami.span@star.stanford.edu
UUCP: ...!ncar!umigw!steve               emmerson%miami.span@vlsi.jpl.nasa.gov
"Computers are like God in the Old Testament: lots of rules and no mercy"