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From: smize@Starbase.NeoSoft.COM (Samuel Mize)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: "Subtract C, add Ada"
Date: 24 Jan 1995 08:25:54 -0600
Organization: NeoSoft Internet Services   +1 713 684 5969
Message-ID: <3g32li$5jd@Starbase.NeoSoft.COM>
References: <3fo2ot$su2@miranda.gmrc.gecm.com>
 <1995Jan23.154631.6702@sei.cmu.edu>
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Date: 1995-01-24T08:25:54-06:00
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In article <1995Jan23.154631.6702@sei.cmu.edu>,
Robert Firth <firth@sei.cmu.edu> wrote:
>In article <3fo2ot$su2@miranda.gmrc.gecm.com> bill@valiant (R.A.L Williams) writes:
>
...
>> 1. It allows your code to be more compact.
>
>>    NB DONT confuse compactness with poor layout! I find that, for example:
>>
>>       while ((c = getchar()) == ' ')
>>       {
>>          /* count spaces */
>>       }
>>
>>    is clearer than the 'expanded' alternative (to *me* :-).
>
>Nope, I find this totally unclear.  Who's counting?  Unless I've missed
>an invisible declaration, initialisation, and increment, the above
>code *doesn't* count spaces, it skips them.

I think he intended the comment to represent elided code.

.. [good point about explicit exit condition not repeated]

>Note also that if there are *no more* non space characters, the C code
>dies in an infinite loop, while the Ada code automatically does the
>right thing, namely raises the END_ERROR exception.

Well "of course" we're assuming that there is no programmer error,
this is C!  ;-)

This bit of code is based on the assumption that there is a null at
the end of your string -- oh, but this is a file read.  C guys:
does C return a null if you getchar at EOF?  Or is this a misplaced
array idiom?

Of course, we *never* see strings without nulls in C...

Sam Mize - smize@starbase.neosoft.com