Making C better (by borrowing from C++)

[Kenny McCormack]

jacob navia said:


I see no justification for that claim.

This comes as a big surprise to us all, trust me.

Anonymous posting confers neither power nor authority. Nor does it carry
respect. Those who hide behind anonymity to make personal attacks are
beneath contempt.

Yes. Very true. So, why do you do it?
(You don't have to answer that...)

If you are suggesting that such cowards are, or are
under the control of, regular contributors to this group, then you really
don't understand the people you attack. I can't see any of them stooping
so low.

This also comes as a big shock.
(You're lying, of course, but that also comes as a big shock to all)

Right. I didn't write libcurl, nor am I responsible for maintaining it, nor
do I stand to make any money off it. I have no financial interest
whatsoever in its success. Nor am I associated with any who do. You,
however, have a vested financial interest in lcc-win's success. So your
promotion of it can hardly claim to be a disinterested and independent
recommendation.

Jacob never claimed to be disinterested. In fact, he has often made it
quite clear that he isn't (disinterested) and that, in fact, he puts
food on his table (at least in part) from the sale of his system. So,
you're raising a straw man here.

His point (which is, of course, 100% spot on) is that the commercial or
non-commercial nature of the spamming isn't the point. The point is who
is doing it (whether or not they are in the clique). It can further be
argue that "commercial" spamming is better, since it indicates someone
who has a stake in things. For example, CBF is constantly hawking his
dumbsh*t ggets() function, which, believe me, is only worth what you pay
for it, because it is free.

 

[Paul Hsieh]

I know that this topic may inflame the "C language Taleban", but is
there any prospect of some of the neat features of C++ getting
incorporated in C?

You would first need to make a case for why you want to use C and not C
++.

[...] No I am not talking out the OO stuff. I am
talking about the non-OO stuff, that seems to be handled much more
elegantly in C++, as compared to C. For example new & delete,
references,

These are part of what makes C++'s OO system work. I don't see how
they make a lot of sense without bringing in a lot of C++'s machinery.

[...] consts,

C has const. Even though it cannot guarantee enforcement, it does
enough to be useful.

declaring variables just before use etc.

Ok, C99 has this. I don't know why, as this is *ALSO* a mechanism
mostly meant to make the OO system work (so constructors can be called
in a more controlled order.)

This has no place in C and, in fact, just leads to unreadable code.
It increases the time taken to search for a variable declaration by
about an order of magnitude.

I am asking this question with a vested interest. I would really
like to use these features in my C programs.

Just use C++. What's the big deal?

 

[Keith Thompson]

Richard Heathfield wrote: [...]

Secondly, by what power or authority does this supposed group
enforce anything? (If the answer is "none", then you contradict
yourself.)

By insulting througha nonymous posts everyone that doesn't agree with
their parochial views

I don't believe that Richard Heathfield posts anonymously. Do you
have any evidence that he does? If not, I suggest you stop repeating
this libellous and false accusation. Stop and think for a moment
before you post an article.

 

[ymuntyan]

I know that this topic may inflame the "C language Taleban", but
[SNIP]
Until and unless you apologize for the above insult, I will not
discuss this or anything else with you.

Then don't... Was it aimed at you personally?

Such insults are typically aimed at "the regulars", of which I am one.
Yes, it very likely was aimed at me and a few others. (If it wasn't,
Masood is free to say so.)

In any case, it doesn't really matter at whom it was aimed. Such
gratuitous preemptive attacks are inappropriate here. Don't you
agree?

In any event you now see how c.l.c is seen by many people. The "C
language Taliban" A group of "religious" nutters.

A small number of trolls claim to see it that way. I hope you don't.
You generally seem more sane than that.

Yay! Until and unless you apologize for the above insult, I will not
discuss
this or anything else with you. Like anybody cares.

We've had this discussion. Richard Heathfield posted an informal
survey asking whether the topicality guidelines for this group should
be loosened. The majority of responders said they shouldn't.

BS.

Yevgen

 

[Richard Heathfield]

(e-mail address removed) said:

BS.

Keith's claim can easily be verified. The title of the thread was "Should
we broaden the topicality of this group?", and it was current around the
beginning of October 2007. Read it for yourself.

 

[ymuntyan]

(e-mail address removed) said:



Keith's claim can easily be verified. The title of the thread was "Should
we broaden the topicality of this group?", and it was current around the
beginning of October 2007. Read it for yourself.

I didn't say there wasn't a thread or the majority of responders
said this or that. I am saying that the Keith's argument is BS,
meaning it has no value. What he said in no way contradicts "c.l.c
needs to relax a but from some of the pedantry being enforced by
a small but vocal group". You obviously believe that the fact
that you started some thread, and that people who support your
position said so, change something [*] [**]. I believe that's BS.

Yevgen

[*] Please don't get started again how you are cool and good
and you in fact would like to relax topicality restrictions
and so on.

[**] Keith's claim, as well as Chris' claim, wasn't about the
topicality, and has nothing to do with your beloved thread
which you mentioned like hundred times already. Topicality
isn't the problem. People going nuts and insulting others is.
Stuff like what I do now.

 

[Richard Heathfield]

(e-mail address removed) said:

What he said in no way contradicts "c.l.c
needs to relax a but from some of the pedantry being enforced by
a small but vocal group".

Are you saying that you would prefer the group to lower the quality of its
advice?

<snip>

 

[ymuntyan]

(e-mail address removed) said:



Are you saying that you would prefer the group to lower the quality of its
advice?

If I understand your question correctly, my answer is "no".

Are you saying that fighting with Jacob Navia is "quality"?
What you say about newbies and kittens, and correcting mistakes,
etc. is BS too. GNU and MS do much more harm than Jacob with his
compiler as far as correct portable code (or learning to write
such code) is concerned.

Let me re-quote what you snip

"In any event you now see how c.l.c is seen by many people. The "C
language Taliban" A group of "religious" nutters.

This is why I have been saying c.l.c needs to relax a but from some of
the pedantry being enforced by a small but vocal group"

You can pick random words from posts and then prove they are
wrong how much you want, but it won't change a thing, you know.
If you want, here you go: you are right again, once more,
hooray!

Yevgen

 

[Richard Heathfield]

(e-mail address removed) said:

If I understand your question correctly, my answer is "no".

That is what Chris Hills was suggesting - a relaxation of pedantry (which
is simply another way of saying "be less accurate in future").

If you don't want that either, then you and I are on the same side - the
side of "getting it right", no matter how unpopular that can sometimes be.

Are you saying that fighting with Jacob Navia is "quality"?

If commercial exploitation of comp.lang.c is not opposed, it will prevail,
and learners of C will be the losers. Yes, opposing commercial
exploitation of the group can be tedious. Yes, it's repetitive. Yes, it
can be misinterpreted as a vendetta. Nevertheless, I still think it's
worth doing.

<snip>

 

[ymuntyan]

(e-mail address removed) said:



That is what Chris Hills was suggesting - a relaxation of pedantry (which
is simply another way of saying "be less accurate in future").

Playing with words, as usual.

If you don't want that either, then you and I are on the same side - the
side of "getting it right", no matter how unpopular that can sometimes be.

See, I have no problem with not discussing off-topic stuff
here. It's totally fine when people tell people this is a
wrong place for certain questions. What is not fine (though
is perfectly normal, unfortunately) is when people punch
you in the face, and then dance around your body singing
"Who's smart? I'm smart!".

If commercial exploitation of comp.lang.c is not opposed, it will prevail,
and learners of C will be the losers. Yes, opposing commercial
exploitation of the group can be tedious. Yes, it's repetitive. Yes, it
can be misinterpreted as a vendetta. Nevertheless, I still think it's
worth doing.

So this is your new thing: JN is a spammer. And you are fighting
"commercial exploitation of comp.lang.c". Yeah.
JN vs RH is going on here for years, and suddenly it becomes
fighting spam which can be *mis*interpreted. Good one!

Yevgen

 

[Richard Heathfield]

(e-mail address removed) said:

On Dec 24, 4:27 pm, Richard Heathfield <[email protected]> wrote:

Playing with words, as usual.

Using them, actually. That's what they're for.

See, I have no problem with not discussing off-topic stuff
here. It's totally fine when people tell people this is a
wrong place for certain questions. What is not fine (though
is perfectly normal, unfortunately) is when people punch
you in the face, and then dance around your body singing
"Who's smart? I'm smart!".

I agree that such behaviour is silly. It doesn't happen here as often as
some people seem to think, but it does happen occasionally, and it's never
pretty.

So this is your new thing: JN is a spammer.

Nothing new about it, and it's not "my" new thing - it's "his" old thing.
He's been spamming here for years. What's more, it's not the only issue.
He very often starts off-topic threads here, he very often posts incorrect
C advice here, and he very often makes serious and unjustified accusations
(he is no stranger to calling people "liars", for example) instead of
thinking carefully about the matter under consideration. All of these
things need opposing.

And you are fighting "commercial exploitation of comp.lang.c".

Among other things, yes.

Yeah.
JN vs RH is going on here for years,

No, what has been going on for years is: (a) opposition to commercial
exploitation of clc; (b) opposition to off-topic threads; (c) corrections
of incorrect C advice; (d) opposition to inurbane behaviour. JN is by no
means the only person who attempts to exploit clc commercially, he is by
no means the only person to start off-topic discussions, he is by no means
the only person to post bad C advice, and he is by no means the only
person to hurl abuse and accusation around instead of thinking for two
minutes together. I haven't time to oppose *all* such posts by *all* such
people, but I do the best I can, while still finding the time to give out
good, topical C advice. Discussions such as this one take time away from
the provision of such advice, and are therefore bad for the group.

What is more, JN occasionally posts non-commercial, topical, correct,
civilised articles. On such occasions, I either say nothing about the
article or find something positive to say about it.

 

[jacob navia]

So this is your new thing: JN is a spammer. And you are fighting
"commercial exploitation of comp.lang.c". Yeah.
JN vs RH is going on here for years, and suddenly it becomes
fighting spam which can be *mis*interpreted. Good one!

Yevgen

That is ridiculous. I could also argue that RH exploits this group
commercially since the fact of him being the guru here promotes his book
and he earns money with it.

What is stupid is that he has the right to promote libcurl, and I do
not have the right of proposing my own work as a solution.

Coming back to C interfaces (that is more on topic):

The problem with libcurl, as the user noted, is that you have to do a
lot of stuff to get a file from the internet. I provided a higher
level interface with just two inputs: URL, and destination file.

This is much more higher level than libcurl.

In general, many interfaces in C tend to be much too low level, bogging
down users into a lot of stuff that could be abstracted away.

For instance, another useful function would be:

char *strfromfile(const char *file_name,const char *open_mode);

This would return a malloced string from the given file or NULL if
something went wrong.

This could be in the library but it isn't.

Most of the time this days, you have enough memory to process
the whole contents of a file into a RAM buffer. This would be
a good addition to the library, like many other HIGHER LEVEL
functions.

Just mt 2c

 

[Default User]

Yay! Until and unless you apologize for the above insult, I will not
discuss
this or anything else with you. Like anybody cares.

*plonk*



Brian

 

[CBFalconer]

That is ridiculous. I could also argue that RH exploits this group
commercially since the fact of him being the guru here promotes
his book and he earns money with it.

What is stupid is that he has the right to promote libcurl, and I
do not have the right of proposing my own work as a solution.

Why this stupidity? Richard did not 'promote' libcurl, he only
justified its mention in other posts. You make no points with this
sort of inaccurate jibing. You haven't even bothered to read the
thread - ymuntyan has been agreeing with you and poking at the poor
'guru's.

We need another general thread to appoint official c.l.c gurus, and
to set their pay scales. Then we should also establish a scale of
fines for disagreeing with them, methods for enthroning and
dethroning, public lists of recommended PLONKEEs, etc. With a
little care we could make this newsgroup completely satisfactory to
me, which is the obvious correct final objective.

 

[Mark McIntyre]

I didn't say there wasn't a thread or the majority of responders said
this or that. I am saying that the Keith's argument is BS, meaning it
has no value. What he said in no way contradicts "c.l.c needs to relax a
but from some of the pedantry being enforced by a small but vocal
group".

Which part of "we had a vote on this idea, and disagreed with it" is hard
for you to understand?

You obviously believe that the fact that you started some
thread, and that people who support your position said so, change
something [*] [**]. I believe that's BS.

And you're apparently the sort of person who will ignore the will of the
majority.

*plonk*

[*] Please don't get started again how you are cool and good

Nobody's ever claimed they were cool or good. You made that up.

 

[Mark McIntyre]

That is ridiculous. I could also argue that RH exploits this group
commercially since the fact of him being the guru here promotes his book
and he earns money with it.

That's almost certainly a base libel. I do not belive RJH (who was by the
way the editor, many other regulars here and in CLC++ and CSC
contributed) has ever promoted the book here. Others have, on the basis
that its pretty good.

What is stupid is that he has the right to promote libcurl, and I do
not have the right of proposing my own work as a solution.

He didn't promote libcurl. He also receives no personal benefit from its
use.

On the other hand, you do receive personal benefit from lcc-win32. You
also seldom if ever declare that interest when suggesting it.

For myself, I'd have less problem with you suggesting lcc-win32 could
solve a specific problem if you also stated clearly your vested interest
and directed the OP to the lcc-win32 newsgroup for further dicsussion.
This would act as much the same sort of redirect as suggesting libcurl
and comp.unix.programmer, and could hardly be complained at.

In general, many interfaces in C tend to be much too low level, bogging
down users into a lot of stuff that could be abstracted away.

Well, thats a point of view. I assume you understand that this low level
is *on purpose*, to allow maximum portability and flexibility.

(of a string from file function)

This could be in the library but it isn't.

so could lots of things. Frankly, its probably not there because its not
a common enough requirement, and everyone agreed it was trivial to
implement your own in 5 minutes.

Most of the time this days, you have enough memory to process the whole
contents of a file into a RAM buffer.

*sigh*. This is a common fault with your postings. You're assuming the
world of PCs. You forget that C serves an enormous embedded-development
community whose memory limitations are significantly greater.

And even if this were not the case - I have a 7TB database, the largest
table of which is about 2TB and which I sincerely doubt makes sense to
load into memory in one go...

 

[Joe Wright]

I didn't say there wasn't a thread or the majority of responders said
this or that. I am saying that the Keith's argument is BS, meaning it
has no value. What he said in no way contradicts "c.l.c needs to relax a
but from some of the pedantry being enforced by a small but vocal
group".

Which part of "we had a vote on this idea, and disagreed with it" is hard
for you to understand?

You obviously believe that the fact that you started some
thread, and that people who support your position said so, change
something [*] [**]. I believe that's BS.

And you're apparently the sort of person who will ignore the will of the
majority.

*plonk*

[*] Please don't get started again how you are cool and good

Nobody's ever claimed they were cool or good. You made that up.

Well I, for one, think that Mark is cool and good. Given that one is a
small group, I'm trying to contact Mark's mother..

Merry Christmas.

 

[Golden California Girls]

If I understand your question correctly, my answer is "no".

Are you saying that fighting with Jacob Navia is "quality"?
What you say about newbies and kittens, and correcting mistakes,
etc. is BS too. GNU and MS do much more harm than Jacob with his
compiler as far as correct portable code (or learning to write
such code) is concerned.

Let me re-quote what you snip

"In any event you now see how c.l.c is seen by many people. The "C
language Taliban" A group of "religious" nutters.

This is why I have been saying c.l.c needs to relax a but from some of
the pedantry being enforced by a small but vocal group"

You can pick random words from posts and then prove they are
wrong how much you want, but it won't change a thing, you know.
If you want, here you go: you are right again, once more,
hooray!

Yevgen

Let me put it this way: What is standard C? There can only be one answer to
that question. It can't be both C89 and C99, it can only be one or the other.
That is the problem with the "C language Taliban" Same as Sunni vs Shi'a. If
you allow more than one, it is the camel's nose under the tent as you have
implicitly approved all.

If anyone really wants to make this a fit place for any of the several C
standards, they better get together a FAQ, posted regularly, about the group and
list which standards are permitted and if they are serious about not having
posts about other C standards they should include pointers to where discussion
on those topics is encouraged. The lack of such a FAQ is a green light to call
GNU a standard C and discuss it here. They would also be smart to include
pointers for O/S specific libraries and questions because the name of the group
invites too much.

 

[ymuntyan]

I didn't say there wasn't a thread or the majority of responders said
this or that. I am saying that the Keith's argument is BS, meaning it
has no value. What he said in no way contradicts "c.l.c needs to relax a
but from some of the pedantry being enforced by a small but vocal
group".

Which part of "we had a vote on this idea, and disagreed with it" is hard
for you to understand?

You obviously believe that the fact that you started some
thread, and that people who support your position said so, change
something [*] [**]. I believe that's BS.

And you're apparently the sort of person who will ignore the will of the
majority.

"Vote", huh? Now that was a vote. Democracy, huh? If you want to call
it a vote, then call it what it is: a made up vote. Though I don't
think there was a vote (except maybe among those ten people who
was willing to play the game of vote or something).

So, that "majority" needs to be a majority. Anyway, that's not the
point. I do not support discussing off-topic stuff here. But claiming
that RH is not white and fluffy doesn't mean what you think it means.
You can't get it obviously.

A rhetoric question, by the way: what part of "vocal minority"
is not understood?

*plonk*

I suppose this means I am talking to a wall. Probably it's good.

[*] Please don't get started again how you are cool and good

Nobody's ever claimed they were cool or good. You made that up.

Richard loves to remind how he started that thread, and especially
how he in fact ... I didn't made it up at all.

 

[Ben Pfaff]

Let me put it this way: What is standard C? There can only be
one answer to that question. It can't be both C89 and C99, it
can only be one or the other.

Why? Both C89 and C99 were arrived at via a standards process.
Both were the current standard at one point.