Re: How to check for errors when inputting a number

On 2009-01-12, Han from China - Master Troll <autistic-pedantry@xxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
James Kuyper wrote:
You really must be from China, because in the English language, "at the
start" can be understood to mean just before the commencement.

I've a Taiwanese wife, and work at a company where 40% of the employees
are foreign-born, mostly Chinese. I'm quite used to such mis-communications.

Looks as if you took the wrong side in that argument. There's no
miscommunication. The standard differentiates between "at the start"
(your misuse) and "prior to the start" (correct use). This is perfectly
clear from clause 5, which I have quoted.

James originally wrote:

`` As a result, 'line' is initialized at the start of the program to the
specified value of 0 ...''

Note that in the English language, with which you are clearly not that
familiar, the past participle "initialized" serves as both verb and adjective.

The following sentence can be interpreted such that there is no logical
conflict:

``Prior to program start, x is initialized to zero, so that
at program start, x is initialized to zero.''

The first occurence of initialized may be interpreted as either a verb (action
of being initialized) or adjective (state of being initialized). The second
interpretation is strictly that of ajective. We can add the term ``already''
and it's still grammatically valid: ``at program startup, x is already
initialized to zero.'' See?

Anyway, we have the as-if rule in language semantics: if you can't write a
program which depends on some distinction in the spec, it's not a true
distinction. The distinction only exists in that area of semantics which has no
bearing on anything real.

There is no rational way that James' statement can be interpreted to mean that
``a C program can be written which can observe static storage in its
uninitialized state''.
.

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