Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!swrinde!ucsd!ucbvax!bloom-beacon!eru!luth!sunic!tut!tukki!sakkinen
From: sakkinen@tukki.jyu.fi (Markku Sakkinen)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc
Subject: Re: Anyone want to design a language?
Message-ID: <3528@tukki.jyu.fi>
Date: 23 Feb 90 09:03:26 GMT
References: <14244@lambda.UUCP> <18172@megaron.cs.arizona.edu>
Reply-To: sakkinen@jytko.jyu.fi (Markku Sakkinen)
Organization: University of Jyvaskyla, Finland
Lines: 26

In article <18172@megaron.cs.arizona.edu> mike@cs.arizona.edu (Mike Coffin) writes:
>From article <14244@lambda.UUCP>, by jlg@lambda.UUCP (Jim Giles):
>> C doesn't _have_ arrays!  It has a strange variant of pointers which
>> can (on rare occasions) simulate arrays in a way that is almost as
>> efficient and easy to read as arrays would have been.
>
>A correction for those readers not familiar with C: the above is not
>true.  Arrays and pointers are different beasts.  The confusion arises
>because array names are *converted* to pointers when passed as
> ...

A further correction for those readers not familiar with C:
Giles's posting is a slight exaggeration. In the sense of memory allocation,
C does have arrays: if you define an external, static, or automatic
array, space is really reserved for it. But arrays certainly are not
first-class objects in the same way as records (struct's) are.
The confusion between arrays and pointers is perhaps the worst
single flaw in C.

Markku Sakkinen
Department of Computer Science
University of Jyvaskyla (a's with umlauts)
Seminaarinkatu 15
SF-40100 Jyvaskyla (umlauts again)
Finland
          SAKKINEN@FINJYU.bitnet (alternative network address)