Re: FORTRAN bug(was Re: C++ vs. Ada -- Is Ada loosing?)

[agate!spool.mu.edu!uwm.edu!cs.utexas.edu!csc.ti.com!tilde.csc.ti.com!mkso l!mccall@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU (fred j mccall 575-3539)]

In <1992Dec9.060218.23940@seas.gwu.edu> mfeldman@seas.gwu.edu (Michael Feldman)
 writes:

>In article <1992Dec8.172551.16780@newshost.lanl.gov> jlg@cochiti.lanl.gov (J. 
Giles) writes:

>[stuff deleted]
>>
>>Well, not quite.  The proper moral is that all programming languages
>>(even informal specification languages) have contexts in which single
>>character errors can lead to linguistically correct programs which
>>don't compute the intended functionality.  The moral often stated
>>instead is that this is a bad feature of Fortran.  While Fortran
>>could indeed have been designed better, it is not the only language
>>with, or even the most severly affected by, this kind of problem.
>>
>You make a good point. Perhaps the modern equivalent of that Fortran
>single-keystroke bug is my favorite bit of C code (and no, I don't
>want to bash C, just point out how common these flukes are):

>   int x;
>   ...
>   x = 1;
>   while (x <= 10);
>   { 
>      printf("%d\n", x);
                       ^^^
>      x++;
>   }

>For 10 points on your grade: what is printed? Why?
>Try explaining it to a freshman.

Nothing is printed.  You built an infinite loop.  This is hard to
understand?  You made a while loop with an empty body and a condition
that is never met because you never increment x.  Your freshmen don't
get this?

>Any similar idiosyncracies in Ada? 

Single character ones?  Probably not, but that just indicates that Ada
is incredibly more verbose than C.  One of the things I DISlike about
it, by the way.

-- 
"Insisting on perfect safety is for people who don't have the balls to live
 in the real world."   -- Mary Shafer, NASA Ames Dryden
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