From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.5-pre1 (2020-06-20) on ip-172-31-74-118.ec2.internal X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.9 required=3.0 tests=BAYES_00 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.5-pre1 Date: 18 Nov 92 18:17:46 GMT From: cochiti.lanl.gov!jlg@lanl.gov (J. Giles) Subject: Re: Computer languages Message-ID: <1992Nov18.181746.14976@newshost.lanl.gov> List-Id: 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