RG <rnospa...@flownet.com> writes:
[...]
> You can't have it both ways. Either I am calling it incorrectly, in
> which case I should get a compiler error, or I am calling it correctly,
> and I should get the right answer. That I got neither does in fact
> falsify the claim. The only way out of this is to say that
> maximum(8589934592, 1) returning 1 is in fact "correct", in which case
> we'll just have to agree to disagree.
You are calling maximum() incorrectly, but you are doing so in a way
that the compiler is not required to diagnose.
If you want to say that the fact that the compiler is not required
to diagnose the error is a flaw in the C language, I won't
argue with you. It's just not a flaw in the maximum() function.
If I write:
const double pi = 22.0/7.0;
printf("pi = %f\n", pi);
then I suppose I'm calling printf() incorrectly, but I wouldn't
expect my compiler to warn me about it.
If you're arguing that
int maximum(int a, int b) { return a > b ? a : b; }
is flawed because it's too easy to call it incorrectly, you're
effectively arguing that it's not possible to write correct
code in C at all.
--
Keith Thompson (The_Other_Keith) ks...@mib.org <http://www.ghoti.net/~kst>
Nokia
"We must do something. This is something. Therefore, we must do this."
-- Antony Jay and Jonathan Lynn, "Yes Minister"
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