Orchid XP v8 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> Warp wrote:

> >   So let me get this straight: You are comparing C in a 10+ years old MS-DOS
> > system to higher-level programming languages (such as Java and Haskell) in
> > modern systems with modern OSes and modern compilers, and based on this you
> > have decided that C sucks?

> As far as I'm aware, C hasn't changed in 20 years, never mind 10.

  Compilers, tools and operating systems have. Besides, C itself has changed
as well (the latest standard is from 1999).

  Or are you telling me this isn't happening with haskell either? If I'm
not mistaken, haskell didn't even have a debugger until recently.

> Really? I had assumed that after you read past the end of the file, it's 
> behaviour is simply undefined. I wasn't expecting the C standard to 
> actually bother to define the result of an operation you're not supposed 
> to perform.

  How are you supposed to detect the end of file if you are not supposed
to ever reach the end of the file? That's kind of contradictory.

> >   Besides, reaching the end of file (and getting that -1) is *not* an error.

> No, reaching EOF is not an error - failing to check for EOF is an error.

  Since reaching EOF is completely valid, how is the compiler supposed to
make sure that you write a conditional which takes it into account? It can't
do this at runtime because returning EOF is completely valid and not an
error, and thus it cannot raise any exceptions at runtime because EOF was
returned. In fact, returning EOF multiple times is not an error either
(it can be perfectly possible for different parts of the program to read
the same file, and all of them get an EOF when there's nothing more to
read, and all of them still work properly).

  So how is the compiler supposed to make sure that you do the "correct"
thing when EOF is returned? What *is* the "correct" thing to do?

> >> I've never seen a C debugger.
> > 
> >   Thus you base all your prejudices on non-knowledge.

> Yes - because having a debugger would make function names easier to 
> remember and pointer syntax less baffling and printf() would work 
> right... oh, wait...

  Now you are twisting the argument, and arguing for the sake of arguing.
The above context had nothing to do with printf or function names.

> >   Luckily haskell doesn't have any arbitrarily selected features in it
> > which you need to memorize (such as for example some function names).

> Well at least you can easily look up Haskell function names.

  Yes, that's something not possible with C.

> Maybe that's part of the problem - I don't have any C programming 
> resources where I can actually look things up.

  Well, I don't have any haskell programming resources where I can
look things up.

  (Before you write an answer to that, think about it for a second.)

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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