From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 109fba,304c86061dc69dba X-Google-Attributes: gid109fba,public X-Google-Thread: 103376,5cb36983754f64da X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2004-02-12 00:44:29 PST Path: archiver1.google.com!news2.google.com!news.maxwell.syr.edu!newsfeed.icl.net!newsfeed.fjserv.net!newsfeed.icl.net!newsfeed.fjserv.net!syros.belnet.be!news.belnet.be!news.worldonline.be!not-for-mail From: Ludovic Brenta Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada,comp.lang.c++ Subject: Re: No call for Ada (was Re: Announcing new scripting/prototyping language) Date: 12 Feb 2004 09:43:33 +0100 Organization: Worldonline Belgium Sender: lbrenta@lbrenta Message-ID: References: <20040206174017.7E84F4C4114@lovelace.ada-france.org> <54759e7e.0402071124.322ea376@posting.google.com> <2460735.u7KiuvdgQP@linux1.krischik.com> <54759e7e.0402081525.50c7adae@posting.google.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: ppp-62-235-79-142.tiscali.be Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Trace: news.worldonline.be 1076575465 10542 62.235.79.142 (12 Feb 2004 08:44:25 GMT) X-Complaints-To: abuse@worldonline.be NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 12 Feb 2004 08:44:25 +0000 (UTC) User-Agent: Gnus/5.09 (Gnus v5.9.0) Emacs/21.3 Xref: archiver1.google.com comp.lang.ada:5477 comp.lang.c++:18840 Date: 2004-02-12T09:43:33+01:00 List-Id: Jerry Coffin writes: > In article , > martin.dowie@btopenworld.com says... > > [ ... ] > > > > A fundamental mistake: assuming that one compiler's inferiority means > > > something about the language itself, or even about other compilers. > > > > That's all well and good but where in the C standard is it required to > > produce a warning? > > It's not -- in some ideal world, it might be that there's a programming > language implementation that warns you every time you do something > wrong, but it certainly doesn't exist in this world. > > I, however, never claimed that the situation with this in C was ideal by > any means. He claimed that because it wasn't caught by one compiler, > that this proved it could only ever be caught by human examination. I > proved that wrong. No, I was comparing languages not compilers. As stated elsewhere, the C language does not require any compiler to catch the particular bug I used as an example. If your compiler does, good for you, but the C language says you cannot assume it will. What your compiler did was akin to "lint", which I referred to as using heuristics, not language rules. Heuristics means that so many people were hurt by this bug before that it seemed like a good idea to try and catch it at compile (or "lint") time. The Ada language mandates that all Ada compilers must catch this bug. This gives much more confidence in Ada than in C. -- Ludovic Brenta.