Path: utzoo!utgpu!watserv1!watmath!att!cbnewsk!ech
From: ech@cbnewsk.ATT.COM (ned.horvath)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.programmer
Subject: Re: dead code, brain dead lilbrary
Message-ID: <2088@cbnewsk.ATT.COM>
Date: 19 Feb 90 22:45:44 GMT
References: <2971@draken.nada.kth.se>
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories
Lines: 22

In article <10294@hoptoad.uucp> tim@hoptoad.UUCP (Tim Maroney) writes:
 
>The proper way to write atoi on the Macintosh is:
>int atoi(StringPtr s) { long i; StringToNum(s, &i); return i; }
 ~~~                     ~~~~                        ~~~~~~~~
>Tim Maroney, Mac Software Consultant, sun!hoptoad!tim, tim@toad.com
 
From article <2971@draken.nada.kth.se>, by d88-jwa@nada.kth.se (Jon Watte):
> I can't believe this !
> 
> Any sane compiler would complain. If you reurn a long, the
> function should be declared long. If you use int, you're wide
> open for all kinds of incompatibilities...

Sorry, Tim is absolutely right.  The Portable C Library standard defines
atoi as returning int (not long, not short).  StringToNum returns a long.
int and long are always compatible, so a compiler might warn, but not fail,
when passed Tim's routine.

Life isn't always so simple...

=Ned Horvath=