Re: A note on computing thugs and coding bums

[Posted and mailed]

Ben Bacarisse said:

spinoza1111 <spinoza1111@xxxxxxxxx> writes:

<snip>

The problem here is that the publication date of the book Beautiful
Code was 2007. It is intellectually dishonest to maintain that
something as pragmatic, as applied, as code can be beautiful, at least
without an explicit statement from Kernighan that "I ignore
international characters", a statement he did not make.

The error of this logic has been pointed out already (I think by
Richard Heathfield, in fact). The code is valid for any character set
at all.

I do not recall saying so, actually, but you're certainly right that the
logic is erroneous.

As for the code being valid for any character set at all, I must take your
word for it, since I can't find any article, in any of these longwinded
threads, in which the original Kernighan source is quoted. (It is possible
that someone did quote it and I missed it.)

But I think you need a rider on your claim. I'm sure you meant that the
code is valid for any character set that is legal in C (which is a very
unrestrictive language, but which does impose /some/ restrictions on
character sets - specifically, that the values of characters in the
required source character set (other than null) must be positive, that
null must be 0, and that '0' to '9' are contiguous).

--
Richard Heathfield <http://www.cpax.org.uk>
Email: -http://www. +rjh@
Google users: <http://www.cpax.org.uk/prg/writings/googly.php>
"Usenet is a strange place" - dmr 29 July 1999
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