HeathField Strange Ideas!

[Malcolm McLean]

Malcolm McLean said:


I have kept out of this thread up until now, for what I hope are obvious
reasons. But it appears that some people participating in this thread
are unaware of the background.

It all goes back to 23rd November 2002, in a thread entitled "help", in
which the OP gave some very bad advice, that I (among others)
corrected. The OP took exception to being corrected, and launched a
long series of vituperative rejoinders, notable more for their heat
than for their light.

In one of them, he threatened to break my nose. (No, really he did.)

He also wrote a negative and indeed expletive review of "C Unleashed"
which he then posted on Amazon (and the review made it very clear that
he has not actually read the book).

In December 2002, he posted a thread to - I think - comp.std.c and
comp.lang.c.moderated, entitled "Richard HeathField. Bad ideas!", from
which the OP in this thread is derived.

On that occasion as on this, I stayed well out of it and he was put
firmly in his place by a number of C experts.

Oh I see.
Five years is rather a long time to nurse a resentment. Some people don't
have much of a life, I expect.

The 2007 post itself was rather arrogant and ill-tempered, but didn't
contain any bad language or threats of violence, so I rather misread the
situation.

 

[Charlton Wilbur]

P> What happened was I have real frustrations about the negative
P> way people in this forum use the standard to restrict what
P> people can do with C,

Nobody here is doing that. Do whatever the hell you want with C.
Just don't talk about it here, if it's not standard portable C.

In other words, what we say, frequently, is that this newsgroup is for
discussion of standard C, and that things which are not standard C,
which is to say things which are not described by any version of the C
standard, should be discussed elsewhere, and answers given here should
refer only to standard C, though suggestions of system-specific things
to look at and redirections elsewhere are not usually frowned upon.

I would wager that just about every knowledgeable regular in this
newsgroup uses non-standard bits of C on a near-daily basis. The
principal difference is that if we want to talk about the parts of C
we use that aren't covered by the standard, we don't do it here: we do
it in comp.unix.programmer, or Apple's carbon-dev mailing list, or
some microsoft.* newsgroup.

Attacking Mr Heathfield (*not* Mr HeathField, as you would see if you
paid attention to the way he spells his name) because you don't like
that what you want to talk about is considered off-topic in this
newsgroup is like yelling at the lifeguard because the sea is salty
when there's a swimming pool 50 yards away. It does little to change
the situation, and makes you look like an ignorant, abrasive boor.

Charlton

 

[Ian Collins]

What happened was I have real frustrations about the negative way people
in this forum use the standard to restrict what people can do with C,
and I searched Google to find if it had been discussed already.

If you are still reading this thread, why have you failed to respond to
the initial requests for examples and clarification? Otherwise, you
simply appear as a troll.

 

[Default User]

I want to say that I am not the person

Please don't top-post. Your replies belong following or interspersed
with properly trimmed quotes. See the majority of other posts in the
newsgroup, or:
<http://www.caliburn.nl/topposting.html>

 

[Keith Thompson]

I want to say that I am not the person involved in any threats with
Richard HeathField in 2002. I only found out about this history from Mr
HeathField's post quoted below. I would never threaten anyone and any
violence makes me sick in the stomach.

What happened was I have real frustrations about the negative way people
in this forum use the standard to restrict what people can do with C,
and I searched Google to find if it had been discussed already. I found
the "HeathField Bad Ideas" post, I thought that it reflected my views in
a nutshell and basically plagiarized it.

I'm sorry if this has brought up bad memories for Mr HeathField - I
really didn't realize it had that extra dimension.

The 2002 poster used the name "Paul", with an e-mail address of
<paulcr<nospambots>@noplacespecial.fsworld.co.uk>. You call yourself
"Paul" with an e-mail address of <[email protected]>. So you didn't
just plagiarize the 2002 article, you posted under the same name.

I don't know (or care) whether you're lying about not being the 2002
poster. Either way, you've made a complete fool of yourself. I
suggest you go away and never return. Please don't bother explaining
yourself, just go away. You've done enough.

 

[Malcolm McLean]

I don't know (or care) whether you're lying about not being the 2002
poster. Either way, you've made a complete fool of yourself. I
suggest you go away and never return. Please don't bother explaining
yourself, just go away. You've done enough.

He says he wasn't the same person who threatened to break Richard's nose.
Fair enough. I don't mind people saying nasty things about Richard's
programming abilities, but there are limits to what the group should
tolerate. That needed to be clarified.

 

[Al Balmer]

I want to say that I am not the person involved in any threats with
Richard HeathField in 2002. I only found out about this history from Mr
HeathField's post quoted below. I would never threaten anyone and any
violence makes me sick in the stomach.

What happened was I have real frustrations about the negative way people
in this forum use the standard to restrict what people can do with C,
and I searched Google to find if it had been discussed already. I found
the "HeathField Bad Ideas" post, I thought that it reflected my views in
a nutshell and basically plagiarized it.

You plagiarized the name of the author, as well? And didn't expect
that anyone would think you were the same person? Pardon my
skepticism.

BTW, don't top-post.

 

[Keith Thompson]

If you are still reading this thread, why have you failed to respond to
the initial requests for examples and clarification? Otherwise, you
simply appear as a troll.

Of *course* he's a troll. He admits to having plagiarized a
5-year-old article.

 

[Paul]

I didn't see any request like that. Anyway I've come to the conclusion
it's useless to argue here - the consensus is obviously that C is an
academic language that exists in theory but can never be used in
practice, at least not if you want to do something as basic as seeing
whether a key was pressed. I'll stick with reading books.

Apologies again to anyone I unwittingly upset by bringing back memories
of threats against someone here.

 

[Keith Thompson]

He says he wasn't the same person who threatened to break Richard's
nose. Fair enough. I don't mind people saying nasty things about
Richard's programming abilities, but there are limits to what the
group should tolerate. That needed to be clarified.

Either he's a troll who threatened to break Richard's nose, or he's a
troll who didn't threaten to break Richard's nose. The reaction of
the group should, IMO, be the same in either case. (Richard is
entitled to respond to the threat if he so chooses, but it took place
5 years ago.)

 

[Kenneth Brody]

Eric Sosman wrote:
[...]

The Standard says that strchr() and its friends are
declared in <string.h>. It does not forbid an implementation
from providing a <strings.h> header in addition, but it saves
the programmer from having to write

#if defined(PLATFORM_X) || defined(PLATFORM_Y)
#include <strings.h>
#else
#include <string.h>
#endif

Yes, we had to do this -- and worse -- in the Bad Old Days.
Now, we don't need to.

[...]

No need to remind me. I remember the "fun" in writing a varadic
function in pre-ANSI days. (Or should I say "multiple versions of
the module containing the varadic function, in order to support
the multiple variations in header files, macros, and so on"?) In
fact, they're still there, #if'ed out, for the rare non-ANSI
compilers we support. (Yes, the default HP-UX compiler is
non-ANSI. It even goes so far as to recognize, yet fail to
compile, prototypes, stating that you need the ANSI version of
the compiler to do so. At least that's what it did a few years
ago when I last used one.)

--
+-------------------------+--------------------+-----------------------+
| Kenneth J. Brody | www.hvcomputer.com | #include |
| kenbrody/at\spamcop.net | www.fptech.com | <std_disclaimer.h> |
+-------------------------+--------------------+-----------------------+
Don't e-mail me at: <mailto:[email protected]>

 

[Al Balmer]

(Top-posting, again.)

I didn't see any request like that.

Then you didn't actually read the replies. There were several such
requests.

Anyway I've come to the conclusion
it's useless to argue here - the consensus is obviously that C is an
academic language that exists in theory but can never be used in
practice, at least not if you want to do something as basic as seeing
whether a key was pressed. I'll stick with reading books.

I find it quite amusing that you wrote:

"For Example: There have been posts made asking for
help on basic things like simple keyboard input routines which are
quickly dismissed to be impossible to do with compliant code."

while just today, I was reading a post by Richard Heathfield advising
someone on the use on conio.h, kbhit(), and getch(), as well as the
Windows APIs for character I/O.

Of course, that post was in an appropriate newsgroup, not in
comp.lang.c.

 

[Ian Collins]

Paul wrote:

Top post corrected.

I didn't see any request like that. A good troll puts up a fight when

cornered.

Then you obviously didn't read any of the replies, for example I asked:

This guy 'Richard Heathfield' and a few others seem to be dictating
nonsense about the ISO standards etc and sending out the impression
that
C is very restricted. For Example: There have been posts made asking
for
help on basic things like simple keyboard input routines which are
quickly dismissed to be impossible to do with compliant code.

Please provide a counter example in pure standard C, we would all
benefit greatly from this.

These people who seem to have the misinterpreted the standards and who
believe they are in place to hinder us have certainly got their ideas
very much wrong.

Please provide an example of this misinterpretation.

Anyway I've come to the conclusion
it's useless to argue here - the consensus is obviously that C is an
academic language that exists in theory but can never be used in
practice, at least not if you want to do something as basic as seeing
whether a key was pressed. I'll stick with reading books.

Every system (which is quite a few) I use with a keypad has a different
method for input. I work on several that don't have one.

All of them are 90% standard C.

 

[Richard Heathfield]

Keith Thompson said:

Either he's a troll who threatened to break Richard's nose, or he's a
troll who didn't threaten to break Richard's nose. The reaction of
the group should, IMO, be the same in either case. (Richard is
entitled to respond to the threat if he so chooses, but it took place
5 years ago.)

My response five years ago was not to bother to respond. The guy is
clearly in need of medication, and I'm not a doctor, so what can I do?

 

[Dik T. Winter]

> I didn't see any request like that. Anyway I've come to the conclusion
> it's useless to argue here - the consensus is obviously that C is an
> academic language that exists in theory but can never be used in
> practice, at least not if you want to do something as basic as seeing
> whether a key was pressed. I'll stick with reading books.

Apparently you are clueless. I have now four windows open on this system.
On all four windows I talk to a C application. Within *none* of the
windows it is possible to find out whether a key is pressed or not.
The *only* connection between the keyboard and the other ends are
character streams.

 

[Kenneth Brody]

Firstly, the standard does not restrict the language -- you can have
a routine to access keyboard in given implementation. Standard only
specifies the minimal requirements implementation have to fulfil.

[...]

Yes, the standard does restrict the language in many ways. For
example, an implementation can't yield the value 5 for the expression
2+2.

That's not a "restriction", it's a "requirement". It requires that
that the implementation properly implement "+" when no overflow
occurs.

--
+-------------------------+--------------------+-----------------------+
| Kenneth J. Brody | www.hvcomputer.com | #include |
| kenbrody/at\spamcop.net | www.fptech.com | <std_disclaimer.h> |
+-------------------------+--------------------+-----------------------+
Don't e-mail me at: <mailto:[email protected]>

 

[user923005]

Keith Thompson said:



My response five years ago was not to bother to respond. The guy is
clearly in need of medication, and I'm not a doctor, so what can I do?

It's hard to feel sorry for net trolls like Nudds, Plutonium, Harris,
etc. but really they are in serious need of help.
Considering the history of USENET, I guess that they almost never get
it.

 

[Ben Bacarisse]

I want to say that I am not the person involved in any threats with
Richard HeathField in 2002. I only found out about this history from Mr
HeathField's post quoted below. I would never threaten anyone and any
violence makes me sick in the stomach.

What happened was I have real frustrations about the negative way people
in this forum use the standard to restrict what people can do with C,
and I searched Google to find if it had been discussed already. I found
the "HeathField Bad Ideas" post, I thought that it reflected my views in
a nutshell and basically plagiarized it.

OK, just so that we know what form this "plagiarism" took, here is
your message that started this thread marked so:

| Message-ID: <[email protected]>
| Date: Fri, 24 Aug 2007 23:11:27 +0200 (CEST)

interleaved with the message from the "other" paulcr marked so:

: Message-ID: <[email protected]>
: From: "Paul" <paulcr<nospambots>@noplacespecial.fsworld.co.uk>
: Date: Sat, 30 Nov 2002 05:45:18 -0000

| This guy 'Richard Heathfield' and a few others seem to be dictating
| nonsense about the ISO standards etc and sending out the impression that
| C is very restricted. For Example: There have been posts made asking for
| help on basic things like simple keyboard input routines which are
| quickly dismissed to be impossible to do with compliant code.

: This guy 'Richard Heathfield' however and a few others seem to be
: dictating nonsense about the ISO standards etc and sending out the
: impression that C is very restricted. For Example: There have been
: posts made asking for help on basic things like simple keyboard input
: routines which are quickly dismissed to be impossible to do with
: compliant code.

| These people who seem to have the misinterpreted the standards and who
| believe they are in place to hinder us have certainly got their ideas
| very much wrong.

: These people who seem to have the misinterpreted the standards and who
: believe they are in place to hinder us have certainly got their ideas
: very much wrong.

| The standards are on our side and there to help us. I trust most can see
| why. If the standards in some way do restrict the C language, I would
| suggest that it be more usefull to correct the standards, than to
| correct the C language in such a manner to make it less portable. Who
| does this guy think he is?

: The standards are on our side and there to help us. I trust most can
: see why. If the standards in some way do restrict the C language, I
: would suggest that it be more usefull to correct the standards, than
: to correct the C language in such a manner to make it less portable.
: Who does this guy think he is?

| And I have also noted he has tried to copy and enlighten on, the much
| respected, Kernighan & Ritchies works. Again who does this guy think he
| is?

: And I have also noted he has tried to copy and enlighten on, the much
: respected, Kernighan & Ritchies works. Again who does this guy think
: he is?

| I find utterly annoying that this person has had a book published
| entitled 'C Unleashed'. This title implying that the book will teach a
| programmer to write 'go anywhere code'. This persons interpretations of
| the standards would infact be more restrictive. How can anyone assume
| the content of this book is anything more than shredder food when the
| author cannot even understand the simple oxymoron 'portable
| restriction'?

: I find utterly annoying that this person has had a book published
: entitled 'C Unleashed'. This title implying that the book will teach a
: programmer to write 'go anywhere code'. This persons interpretations
: of the standards would infact be more restrictive. How can anyone
: assume the content of this book is anything more than shredder food
: when the author cannot even understand the simple oxymoron 'portable
: restriction'?

I would argue some of these points with you, but you are either the
same paulcr, and now want to distance yourself from that last row, or
you deliberately posted someone else's inflammatory text. Neither
suggests that debate is likely to be worthwhile.

 

[pete]

Malcolm McLean said:


I have kept out of this thread up until now,
for what I hope are obvious
reasons. But it appears that some people participating in this thread
are unaware of the background.
It all goes back to 23rd November 2002,
in a thread entitled "help", in
which the OP gave some very bad advice, that I (among others)
corrected. The OP took exception to being corrected, and launched a
long series of vituperative rejoinders, notable more for their heat
than for their light.

I found a different thread very much like that one:

http://groups.google.com/group/alt.comp.lang.learn.c-c++/msg/b76ec067270d9cf6

http://groups.google.com/group/alt....lnk=gst&q=nose+break&rnum=22#6bd2f63ea1f5796d

In one of them, he threatened to break my nose.
(No, really he did.)

I found that one.

http://groups.google.com/group/alt.comp.lang.learn.c-c++/msg/82c5c4b2e59984e0

In December 2002, he posted a thread to - I think - comp.std.c and
comp.lang.c.moderated, entitled "Richard HeathField. Bad ideas!", from
which the OP in this thread is derived.

I found that one.
He just copied that one without the first two paragraphs,
to make the original post in this thread now here in clc.

http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.c.moderated/msg/e92069ef14401443

http://groups.google.com/group/comp...43?tvc=1&q="Bad+ideas"&hl=en#e92069ef14401443

On that occasion as on this, I stayed well out of it and he was put
firmly in his place by a number of C experts.

He is a very powerful troll.
Much stronger than our resident ones.
This is my fourth post in his thread.

 

[Chris Hills]

P> What happened was I have real frustrations about the negative
P> way people in this forum use the standard to restrict what
P> people can do with C,

Nobody here is doing that. Do whatever the hell you want with C.
Just don't talk about it here, if it's not standard portable C.

I think you have just proved his point.

In other words, what we say, frequently, is that this newsgroup is for
discussion of standard C,

That is for comp.std.c This group is for the use of C.
The "standard C" the pedants here refer to seems to encompass ANY
version of C including unpublished drafts but not the real world use of
C.

This is a mistake. Instead of screaming "that is non-standard go away"
we should have a slightly more relaxed view. Yes point people at more
appropriate groups but don't be holier than thou about it and some
discussion of C that is not pure ISO C is nto a bad thing.

We will not get swamped in "OT" posts. What i happening at the moment is
that we are getting swamped in posts shouting OT and the subsequent
argument,

If all those who yell "OT!" every 5 minutes refrained from doing so I
think we would have a far better group and the signal to noise ratio
would drop because we would not have then constant "is it OT" argument
raging.

It would also expand the cause of using portable c (where appropriate)
at the moment most who drop in and ask an "OT" question usually leave
very quickly thinking that the group is full of a pedant net nannines
who are not connected to the real world. That helps no one.