Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cwjcc!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!osu-cis!att!ihlpb!nevin1 From: nevin1@ihlpb.ATT.COM (Liber) Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc Subject: Re: Call by string Message-ID: <9525@ihlpb.ATT.COM> Date: 3 Feb 89 03:57:32 GMT References: <4279@enea.se> Reply-To: nevin1@ihlpb.UUCP (55528-Liber,N.J.) Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories - Naperville, Illinois Lines: 23 In article <4279@enea.se> sommar@enea.se (Erland Sommarskog) writes: >In the discussion about Bondage & >Discipline langauges I said that a lanaguge like C was a B&D >language if I want to call a routine by its name which I have >in a string. To be technically correct, what you should have said is that you want to call a routine by its name which you have in an array of char terminated by a null byte, and you think that C is a B&D language because it does not directly support any operations on arrays of char terminated by a null byte. "Strings" are NOT first class objects in C, nor should they be! No matter how you implement strings (special terminator, fixed length, keep size separately, etc.), there are always some applications where it is advantageous, and others where it is not. One of the benefits of C is that you can implement them any way you want; the language doesn't tie you down to one implementation. To call this B&D (besides not using the original poster's definition) is ludicrious. -- _ __ NEVIN ":-)" LIBER nevin1@ihlpb.ATT.COM (312) 979-4751 IH 4F-410 ' ) ) "I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, / / _ , __o ____ briefed, debriefed or numbered! My life is my own!" / (_