From: bagpiper@mcosm.uucp
Subject: Re: Excerpts from "The C Programming Language" (Re: C bashing)
Date: 24 May 90 20:58:15 GMT [thread overview]
Message-ID: <233@mcosm.uucp> (raw)
In-Reply-To: 2426@psuhcx.psu.edu
I basically agree with Mr. Hannum...I just want to correct his misconception
that you can't do cast-like operations in Ada....you just can't do them
very efficiently!! (no flames please, many Ada implementation don't handle
generics very well...)
In article <2426@psuhcx.psu.edu>, hannum@schubert.psu.edu (Charles Hannum) writes:
> To settle some of the flame wars from Ada, Lisp, and Pascal lovers against the
> C language, I quote some paragraphs from the introduction to "The C Programming
> Language" by Brian W. Kernighan and Dennis M. Ritchie below:
>
[stuff deleted]
> of incompatible data types. Nevertheless, C retains the basic philosophy that
> programmers know what they are doing; it only requires that they state their
> intentions explicitly."
>
> Pay careful attention to that last sentence. This is the basic philosophical
> difference between C and [Ada,Pascal,...]. C allows you to do funny type cast-
> ing, as long as you state it explicitly. [Ada,Pascal,...] does not. In the
> hands of an idiot, this is dangerous. In the hands on an experienced and
> knowledgable programmer, this is a powerful tool.
You can do cast like operations in Ada. Check out the predefined generic
UNCHECKED_CONVERSION. There are also a few other places where Ada seems
to have lower level features then c. Some of the representation attributes
are hard to copy in c. Of course the other day I was trying to write
a minimal debugger in Ada and just about killed myself for some way to
represent a generic pointer (void *). Oh well....
[more stuff deleted]
> Virtually,
> - Charles Martin Hannum II PennMUD Design Team - (Resident) Programmer
> (That's Charles to you!) "Those who say a thing cannot be done should
> Please send mail to: under no circumstances stand in the way of
> hannum@haydn.psu.edu he who is doing it." - a misquote
Later,
Michael
P.S. I am no receiving comp.lang.ada yet (I'm working on it), so if someone
in comp.lang.ada has something to say, please mail it.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+ Michael Hunter {backbone}!hacgate!trwind!mcosm!bagpiper +
+ BIX:bagpiper +
+ NOTHING like a spacecraft with a bad attitude!!! +
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
next parent reply other threads:[~1990-05-24 20:58 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 2+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
[not found] <2426@psuhcx.psu.edu>
1990-05-24 20:58 ` bagpiper [this message]
1990-05-25 15:10 ` Excerpts from "The C Programming Language" (Re: C bashing) David Kassover
replies disabled
This is a public inbox, see mirroring instructions
for how to clone and mirror all data and code used for this inbox