Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ames!sgi!bam@rudedog.SGI.COM
From: bam@rudedog.SGI.COM (Brian McClendon)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: Re: A Lesson Learned
Summary: not MWC or the ST's fault
Message-ID: <29079@sgi.SGI.COM>
Date: 21 Mar 89 02:41:31 GMT
References: <8903202254.AA00303@icase.edu>
Sender: daemon@sgi.SGI.COM
Organization: Silicon Graphics, Inc., Mountain View, CA
Lines: 27

In article <8903202254.AA00303@icase.edu>, csrobe@ICASE.EDU (Charles S. [Chip] Roberson) writes:
[stuff deleted]
> 	fprintf( stderr, isprint(*cp)? "[%c]":"[%02x]", *cp++ );
[stuff deleted]
> The moral of this story?  Well, as my Theory of Prog. Lang prof would
> say, "That's just another insecurity of C!"; to which he would add
> "Ada is a much better language."  Well, I guess I would say
> "Hey! Be careful out there."
> 
> Seriously, this is one side-effect that I hadn't thought about.  How
> do other ST compiler's pass their parameters?  So much for portability,
> eh?  Does anybody know how the dpANS standard would affect this, if at
> all?  I can't seem to remember anything in it that would.
> 

This isn't a problem with MWC.  There is no definition of what order
arguments are "executed" in the C bible (K&R) that I could find.  While
the fprintf(...) is slick code, it is also machine-dependent and VERY
un-portable (I think the Clipper (RISC) compiler also executes parameters
 backwards).

--
			- brian

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   Brian McClendon bam@rudedog.SGI.COM ...!uunet!sgi!rudedog!bam 415-335-1110
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