Re: Swapping Bull***

From: Irrwahn Grausewitz (irrwahn33_at_freenet.de)
Date: 07/07/04 

Date: Wed, 07 Jul 2004 10:32:02 +0200

Dan.Pop@cern.ch (Dan Pop) wrote:
>In <gs8fe0l2lcl11j47ronbt8sddujq4tvkcq@4ax.com> Irrwahn Grausewitz <irrwahn33@freenet.de> writes:
>
<snip>
>>Agreed, but it's IMHO likely to confuse newbies, if e.g. someone calls
>>a dereferenced pointer a variable, as happened up-thread.
>
>I disagree. It's perfectly intuitive (unless you happen to be Julie):
>p points to a variable and *p is the variable pointed to by p. Why would
>a newbie be confused by the simplest thing about pointers in C?

IMO we should agree to disagree: *p is not a proper identifier and it
can't be initialized on declaration, thus it's not a variable. *p is
the contents of the memory location p points to, converted to the type
p is a pointer to.

<snip>
>>Definitly; it's much better to explain the "proper" terminology in
>>context. I consider this to be one (albeit not main) purpose of this
>>news-group.
>
>When replying to a newbie question, you must consider the newbie's
>priorities. Giving him a full lesson about the "proper" terminology
>instead of providing a simple explanation in terms he already understands
>is not exactly what I call helpful.

Is your world really black and white only? There's not a great void
between a simple explanation and an exhaustive lecture in applied
Standardese. A comprehensible explanation, enriched with some
additional remarks about terminology (or other theoretical concepts,
for that matter) is what I'd call not only helpful, but educative,
too.

> There is plenty of time to learn
>the "proper" terminology later and most people have nothing to lose by
>never learning it. Again, real world vs the ivory tower: I've been
>programming for years without the slightest clue about the "proper"
>terminology and the code written back then is still working...

You're not the only one. But, again, what's wrong with learning
something correct every once in a while, even if it's not highly
important for the practical solution of the problem at hand?

<snip>
>>Fortunately, c.l.c will never become a perfect ivory tower, or at
>>the very least as long as I continue to post here... ;-)
>
>Then, why are you arguing on the ivory tower side? ;-)

Since I'm not, the only correct answer to this question is: Mu. ;-)

Regards 

-- 
Irrwahn Grausewitz (irrwahn33@freenet.de) 
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