Re: Puzzling program

On Fri, 10 Aug 2007 12:11:52 -0700, Keith Thompson wrote:
Well, this may be more a case of "we're only coding for one specific
platform, and don't care about portability". (Not that that's
necessarily a good thing, but at least the code becomes "system
specific behavior" rather than "errors". Of course, what happens
when they decided to port to a similar, but 64-bit, platform?)

Here's the original program:

void main()
{
char *s = "abc";
int *i = (int *) s;
printf("%x", *i);
}


That's not just system-specific, it's *bad*. Even if you're assuming
a particular set of characteristics for the platform, I can think
of at least four corrections that should be made (add '#include
<stdio.h>', use 'int main(void)', use unsigned int rather than int,
and add a 'return 0;') Not caring about portability is no excuse
for these errors.
Even a newline at the end of the output wouldn't hurt.
--
Army1987 (Replace "NOSPAM" with "email")
No-one ever won a game by resigning. -- S. Tartakower

.

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