TheFlyingDutchman <zzbba...@aol.com> writes: > On Sep 30, 10:37 pm, RG <rnospa...@flownet.com> wrote: >> In article <87tyl63cag....@mail.geddis.org>, >> Don Geddis <d...@geddis.org> wrote: >> > Keith Thompson <ks...@mib.org> wrote on Thu, 30 Sep 2010: >> > > RG <rnospa...@flownet.com> writes: >> > >> You're missing a lot of context. I'm not trying to criticize C, just to >> > >> refute a false claim that was made about it. >> > > Can you cite the article that made this false claim, and exactly what >> > > the false claim was? >> >> >http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.lisp/msg/431925448da59481 >> >> > Message-ID: >> > <0497e39d-6bd1-429d-a86f-f4c89babe...@u31g2000pru.googlegroups.com> >> > From: TheFlyingDutchman <zzbba...@aol.com> >> > Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp >> >> > [...] >> > in C I can have a function maximum(int a, int b) that will always >> > work. Never blow up, and never give an invalid answer. If someone >> > tries to call it incorrectly it is a compile error. >> > [...]
That was slightly overstated. In fact, you can have such a function that will always work when called correctly, *unless* something else has caused the program's behavior to be undefined, in which case all bets are off. [...] > Thanks from me as well, Don. I was worried that people would start to > believe that the original statement was what you said it was: > > "I'm not even saying it's a flaw in the language. All I'm saying is > that > the original claim -- that any error in a C program will be caught by > the compiler -- is false, and more specifically, that it can be > demonstrated to be false without appeal to unknown run-time input." Yes, that would have been an absurd claim if anyone had actually made it. -- Keith Thompson (The_Other_Keith) ks...@mib.org <http://www.ghoti.net/~kst> Nokia "We must do something. This is something. Therefore, we must do this." -- Antony Jay and Jonathan Lynn, "Yes Minister" -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list