Path: utzoo!utgpu!utstat!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ames!xanth!mcnc!ecsvax!utoddl
From: utoddl@ecsvax.UUCP (Todd M. Lewis)
Newsgroups: comp.misc
Subject: Re: Silly programming problems
Message-ID: <6686@ecsvax.UUCP>
Date: 20 Mar 89 14:03:24 GMT
References: <817@krafla.rhi.hi.is> <984@masscomp.UUCP>
Organization: UNC Educational Computing Service
Lines: 33

In article <984@masscomp.UUCP>, ftw@masscomp.UUCP (Farrell Woods) writes:
> In article <817@krafla.rhi.hi.is> frisk@rhi.hi.is (Fridrik Skulason) writes:
> >I am looking for some silly but difficult problems for use in a contest.
> 
> I saw this once on a midterm exam given in a first-semester Pascal course.
> It was one of those "find all the syntax errors in the following program"
> deals.  The same stunt can be applied in C as well.  For sake of brveity,
> I've shortened the example:
> 
> program foo(input, output)
> 
> begin
> 
> [ body of foo ]	 (* some miscellaneous comment in the middle of foo * )
> 		 (* which of course was obscured by other comments *)
> 
> end.
Which is an excellent example demonstrating the desirability
of (* Nested (* Comments *) *).  If nested comments were the
norm, the above program would have produced a compile-time
error to the effect of "comment from line ## not terminated.
Unexpected end of text".  This can be applied in C as well
(is there an echo in here).  In that case, you wouldn't have
to use those ugly preprocessor directives to "comment out" 
sections of code.  Don't get me wrong, I like the preprocessor
for what it is, but using it for comment delineation is
Simply Wrong (IMHO).
  _____        
    |      Todd M. Lewis            Disclaimer: If you want my employer's
    ||\/|  utoddl@ecsvax.uncecs.edu             ideas, you'll have to
    ||  ||                                      _buy_ them. 
     |  ||     
         |___   (Never write a program bigger than your screen.)