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From: sdh@flash.bellcore.com (Stephen D Hawley)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.programmer
Subject: Re: dead code, brain dead lilbrary
Message-ID: <20148@bellcore.bellcore.com>
Date: 20 Feb 90 22:01:57 GMT
References: <1990Feb14.204332.24800@caen.engin.umich.edu> <20062@bellcore.bellcore.com> <10294@hoptoad.uucp>
Sender: news@bellcore.bellcore.com
Reply-To: sdh@flash.UUCP (Stephen D Hawley)
Organization: Bellcore, Morristown, NJ
Lines: 53

I write:
*Ok, quiz question:
*How many of you can write/have written atoi()?
Tim Writes:
>I have.  It was a mistake.  Eventually I threw it away.  You should use
>NumToString and StringToNum.  Any "atoi" you write will almost
>certainly be unfriendly in international environments.  The one you
>gave is.
>
>The proper way to write atoi on the Macintosh is:
>
>int atoi(StringPtr s) { long i; StringToNum(s, &i); return i; }


Agreed, this is the best way to write it for a Macintosh-specific
application.  This, however, does not apply if you are porting *from*
a UNIX environment.  I wrote my atoi() to be strictly compatible with the
Berkeley UNIX manual, but that is not the nit I was picking.

My point was not: "who can write the shortest atoi()?",
but the more important question: "when will Think C's libraries be put
in a reasonable order?"  Since Think's atoi() is defined using sscanf(),
you bring most of the world with you no matter how smart the linker is.

atoi() is not, by far, the only culprit of this.  Think's ANSI library should
have a far greater atomicity than it does.  Applications shouldn't HAVE to
be several extra K long because of this.  "Sure", one might say, "memory and
storage are cheap.  What's a few K among friends?"  It means a lot to me.  I
consider programmer a craft.  Think's ANSI library is sloppy craftsbeingship.

Consider the following program:

#include <stdio.h>

main()
{
	int i = atoi("12345");
}

If you build an application from this you get the following sizes:
Library				App. Size in bytes	Library Size in bytes
ANSI-small			7,890			11,818
ANSI				20,978			27,972
my atoi()			1,272			122

I don't care about atoi(), I care about the luggage I have to haul around.

Steve Hawley
sdh@flash.bellcore.com
A noun's a special kind of word.
It's ev'ry name you ever heard.
I find it quite interesting,
A noun's a person place or thing.