Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!rutgers!bellcore!faline!thumper!ulysses!ggs
From: ggs@ulysses.homer.nj.att.com (Griff Smith)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: Array indexing vs. pointers...
Summary: wait until ANSII C
Message-ID: <10703@ulysses.homer.nj.att.com>
Date: 7 Oct 88 00:04:16 GMT
References: <836@proxftl.UUCP| <3105@hubcap.UUCP> <1700@dataio.Data-IO.COM> <171@umigw.MIAMI.EDU>
Distribution: na
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill
Lines: 43

In article <171@umigw.MIAMI.EDU>, steve@umigw.MIAMI.EDU (steve emmerson) writes:
[my original deleted]
> 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.

I'm still not crazy about using fputs as an efficiency hack, but this seems to be
on the right track.

> In ANSII-C you could even have the macro append the newline.

If I remember correctly, I can avoid the formatting problem completely
in ANSII C and avoid silly macros:

	(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"
			);

> Don't write vulnerable code (at least not without *very* good reason).

I try not to.  A similar note to the other side: don't make gratuitous
changes to other people's code without a good reason.  I have been
burned several times by having something break because someone else
"improved" it.  In one case I failed to add a comment to explain why a
fairly complicated addition was necessary; someone else decided that it
was ugly and stripped it.  In another case the comment was there, and
ignored.

> -- 
> Steve Emmerson                     Inet: steve@umigw.miami.edu [128.116.10.1]
-- 
Griff Smith	AT&T (Bell Laboratories), Murray Hill
Phone:		1-201-582-7736
UUCP:		{most AT&T sites}!ulysses!ggs
Internet:	ggs@ulysses.att.com