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.

>>>   You mean reaching the end of the file is such a fatal error, that the
>>> program must be terminated with an exception?
> 
>> Well, it beats producing random garbage, surely?
> 
>   Since when has the EOF value been "random garbage"? In standard C the EOF
> value is -1 (integer, not char), and a file read past the end of file will
> always return -1. How is that "random garbage"?

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.

>   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.

>> 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...

>> Nor would I know where to find one. 
> 
>   Any decent compiler will have one.

I would imagine so, yes.

>> There are two possibilities which are apparently equally valid. It's 
>> very difficult to remember which one of them was arbitrarily selected by 
>> the language designers.
> 
>   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.

Maybe that's part of the problem - I don't have any C programming 
resources where I can actually look things up. So if something doesn't 
work, there's the Borland C++ help file, or there's experimentation. 
Neither of these things help terribly much.

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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