Re: Computer languages

[cochiti.lanl.gov!jlg@lanl.gov (J. Giles)]

In article <9211121331.AA21974@efftoo.boeing.com>, crispen@efftoo.boeing.com (c
rispen) writes:
|> Sorry for the heresy that follows, but every time there's any text
|> to process, it's C for me.  [...]

Why?  C has *NO* language features supporting text *at all*.  It has
callable functions which are inconvenient and can be efficiently
written for *any* other language as well.  Even Fortran has better,
more convenient text handling features than C.  All the C text
handling functions can be written, tested, and debugged in Fortran
in about an hour (I know: I did it once on a bet).  But Fortran
has string assignment, substring selection, and concatenation
*built-in*!

To be sure, there are text handling *languages* which are better
than any of the general purpose Fortran, Ada, or Pascal style
languagtes for text.  But C is by far worse than any of these.

I can never understand why C is so often recommended for the 
things it's *poorest* at.

-- 
J. Giles