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Activity for Lundin
| Type | On... | Excerpt | Status | Date |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Comment | Post #290316 |
On the other hand I don't understand the C rationale to make these macros either. If the intention was to allow evil things like `#ifdef stdin #undef stdin #endif #define stdin something_else` then it wouldn't be wise to use `stdin` as the name for the internal variable. (more) |
— | 5 months ago |
| Comment | Post #290316 |
As per your last code example, it would be fine for the library to name the variable `extern FILE *stdin;` and then do `#define stdin stdin`. This would still enable stuff like `#ifdef stdin` - it doesn't "flip off" any original intent. Why they didn't do that in the unknown standard lib mentioned, I... (more) |
— | 5 months ago |
| Comment | Post #290314 |
This requires digging into the specific library implementation - you don't mention which one - in search of a rationale or naming conventions. Without knowing that, the question cannot be answered. Though open source code bases in general tend to be quite irrationally written and do not necessarily f... (more) |
— | 5 months ago |
| Comment | Post #290215 |
@#53937 That's correct. The syntax for calling a function-like macro contains commas in itself so we can't pass comma operator arguments without surrounding the argument with parenthesis. The formal syntax is _identifier-list:_ which can either be _identifier_ or _identifier-list_ `,` _identifier_. (more) |
— | 6 months ago |
| Edit | Post #290223 | Initial revision | — | 6 months ago |
| Answer | — |
A: When should I parenthesize macro arguments in C? Simply put: parenthesis are used whenever we suspect that there may be operator precedence issues. - Either because the user passed an expression containing several operands and operators to the macro. To deal with this we need to surround the use of each macro parameter with parenthesis. ... (more) |
— | 6 months ago |
| Edit | Post #279576 |
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— | 6 months ago |
| Comment | Post #290043 |
While questions about bash scripts are on-topic here, I think we expect such questions to mainly focus on the script itself, such as "here is my bash script for x, what's wrong with it." Maybe consider posting this at [Linux Systems](https://linux.codidact.com/) instead - I suspect it is a more suita... (more) |
— | 7 months ago |
| Comment | Post #290007 |
@#65944 If you have a "missing braces" bug, you can pretty much immediately tell if it was intentional, most often you got fooled by the indention. At the same time it is very hard to come up with a rationale for why you would _skip_ braces. ("I don't like typing" ought to be the worst rationale ever... (more) |
— | 7 months ago |
| Comment | Post #289415 |
I would guess that the gcc rationale is rather the one from 6.2.6.1 "When a value is stored in an object of structure or union type, including in a member object, the bytes of the object representation that correspond to any padding bytes take
unspecified values.51)" Where the foot note says: "Thus,... (more) |
— | 7 months ago |
| Comment | Post #289415 |
@#53937 That seems like an unreasonable interpretation. The whole purpose of initializing something "as if it has static storage duration" with `{0}` is that the object may then potentially get allocated in .bss (rather than .data), which leads to faster initialization. Any implementation doing a sel... (more) |
— | 7 months ago |
| Comment | Post #290007 |
In fact the whole problem with SO's "opinion-based" close reasons is that they think that good program design is a matter of personal, subjective opinions. It is not that, it is not art. There are correct ways proven in use, such as object-orientation which has proven to be the best known way to desi... (more) |
— | 7 months ago |
| Comment | Post #290007 |
The point is that certain ways of writing programs are bad and it can be proven scientifically, beyond opinions and personal believes. You take a misbehaving program and track down the root cause. If you do that a million times on a million programs, bad practices emerge as hard evidence. For example... (more) |
— | 7 months ago |
| Comment | Post #278658 |
@#53937 That seems to be a common misconception. 6.3.2.3 always said "An integer constant expression with the value 0, or such an expression cast to type void *, is called a _null pointer constant_." With a foot note saying that NULL is a null pointer constant. What's implementation-defined about NUL... (more) |
— | 7 months ago |
| Comment | Post #289415 |
@#53937 Stop reading fishy blogs (JeanHeyd Meneide? he should know better) and instead read the mentioned part in C17 6.7.9 §10 (C23 6.7.10 §11) regarding implicit initialization of variables with static storage duration. It clearly states "if it is an aggregate, every member is initialized (recursiv... (more) |
— | 7 months ago |
| Comment | Post #281519 |
A rose by any other name... :) My post does mention `strlcpy` as an equivalent alternative though. (more) |
— | 7 months ago |
| Comment | Post #289415 |
And why should I care about some fiasco project for Linux made in the 90s where some open source people said "lets make _our_ way the standard way" then try to market that crap as some "standard for OS", while at the same time blatantly ignoring ISO C90 and every version of C ever released later. Als... (more) |
— | 7 months ago |
| Comment | Post #289415 |
@#53937 Please don't get me started on POSIX...
POSIX isn't even compatible with conforming ISO C. A conforming implementation is not allowed to break the behavior of a strictly conforming program. By spewing non-standard identifiers inside standard headers, that's exactly what POSIX does. Which ... (more) |
— | 7 months ago |
| Comment | Post #289415 |
And to be pedantic, nothing is ever initialized to `NULL` but to a null pointer. For confusion between `NULL` and null pointers, check out: [What's the difference between null pointers and NULL?](https://software.codidact.com/posts/278657) (more) |
— | 7 months ago |
| Comment | Post #289415 |
@#53937 There is no difference. `0` is a null pointer constant. What applies during initialization of pointers is the rules of assignment C17 6.5.16: "- the left operand is an atomic, qualified, or unqualified pointer, and the right is a null pointer constant;". For incomplete initialization lists, 6... (more) |
— | 7 months ago |
| Comment | Post #289415 |
@#53937 The difference is in the expectations. Nobody expects `memccpy` to null terminate a string - why would it? It is as low level as it goes - it knows nothing about strings. Whereas plenty of people expects `strncpy` to do so, even though that function was not intended to be used for null termin... (more) |
— | 7 months ago |
| Comment | Post #281519 |
@#53937 Unfortunately that doesn't standardize other OS flavours like `strcpy_s`, which would have been the version blessed by the actual C standard if not for the "Annex K bounds-checking" fiasco. I don't think Annex K has changed as per C23 either. (more) |
— | 7 months ago |
| Comment | Post #289985 |
""Teaching to fish" is strongly encouraged in answers. So explaining how to solve the problem, rather than just giving the solution." Well what you describe is rather "teaching how to fish along with the free fish is strongly encouraged" - I completely agree, personally I always try to do this. Along... (more) |
— | 7 months ago |
| Comment | Post #289985 |
"Askers are gently guided with edit requests and comments, not downvotes without an explanation of what's wrong" Well this is a culture thing more than a on-topic/off-topic thing. Another category won't solve that. Since day 1 of Codiact, I have been pushing for a different approach than SO - summari... (more) |
— | 7 months ago |
| Comment | Post #289985 |
"Askers are encouraged to provide all necessary data, ideally MWEs, and no more " Already the case in the main Q&A category as well. (more) |
— | 7 months ago |
| Comment | Post #289985 |
"Any type of debugging question is welcome, no matter how localized or specific" This is pretty much already the case. When you have a bug which you can't find, you don't know the cause. It can be anything from an embarrassing typo to an intricate compiler bug or anything in between. (more) |
— | 7 months ago |
| Comment | Post #290007 |
"Software development is an art, not a science" Yeah we all went through that naive phase at some point. It is not art, it is a craft and it is engineering. You can apply population studies on source code and then conclude what practices that lead to bugs. This was already done in the 1990s by Les H... (more) |
— | 7 months ago |
| Comment | Post #289709 |
@#65944 Unless you can provide some evidence of that, it kind of sounds like yet another wild conspiracy theory... Unless you think $$$ is an ideology; Google and SE probably have that much in common. (more) |
— | 7 months ago |
| Comment | Post #289828 |
@#61308 Sorry but that is uninformed. Look, I work with electronics design - I have been involved in many battery pack and charger designs, including writing firmware for one in place of a BMS. I have seen malfunctioning NiMH and Li/Ion batteries burn up several times, due to malfunctioning, polarity... (more) |
— | 7 months ago |
| Comment | Post #289828 |
@#61308 Here I'm trying to picture what a layman _would imagine_ a short circuit to be. For example how I used the term myself, before I started working in the electronics industry. Think of some robot in sci/fi fiction having a malfunction, the others characters will often say something like "he has... (more) |
— | 7 months ago |
| Comment | Post #289831 |
@#53410 Except actual short circuits aren't often conditional. It's a poor analogy for that reason as well. (more) |
— | 7 months ago |
| Comment | Post #289837 |
I'm not sure if the last AND gate analogy is relevant. These work with 2 or more inputs that are evaluated simultaneously at the edge of a clock pulse, whereas software has to evaluate each operand one at a time. And there is hopefully no such thing as a short circuit anywhere in sight when dealing w... (more) |
— | 7 months ago |
| Edit | Post #289831 |
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— | 7 months ago |
| Edit | Post #289831 |
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— | 7 months ago |
| Edit | Post #289831 | Initial revision | — | 7 months ago |
| Answer | — |
A: What is the meaning of "short circuit" operators? It's an unfortunate analogy. Apart from being confusing, it does indeed assume some basic electronics knowledge. In electronics a short circuit (or the common jargon "a short") does not necessarily refer to a catastrophic event like cables burning up - it just means that you connect two signals/condu... (more) |
— | 7 months ago |
| Edit | Post #289828 |
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— | 7 months ago |
| Edit | Post #289828 |
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— | 7 months ago |
| Edit | Post #289828 | Initial revision | — | 7 months ago |
| Question | — |
What is the meaning of "short circuit" operators? When reading about various operators used by programming languages, the term "short circuit behavior" is often used. For example in this C code: int a = 0; a && b++ Someone explained that `b++` is never executed because the logical AND operator "short circuits". What do they even mean ... (more) |
— | 7 months ago |
| Edit | Post #289709 |
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— | 8 months ago |
| Edit | Post #289709 |
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— | 8 months ago |
| Edit | Post #289709 | Initial revision | — | 8 months ago |
| Answer | — |
A: How can we grow this community? Search engine optimization? I thought this goes without saying, but apparently we aren't doing too well there for some reason. The other day I was having a discussion with someone at SO regarding how hard it was to find specific information about anything on SO, even when using Google for the ... (more) |
— | 8 months ago |
| Edit | Post #289707 | Initial revision | — | 8 months ago |
| Answer | — |
A: Handling common wrong approaches and misguided motivations for basic technique questions I think this is important to consider because it doesn't only concern questions about bad practices or XY questions, but also if we should allow questions with artificial requirements or questions about code obfuscation. Currently we have no rule for/against any of this. As for if we should ca... (more) |
— | 8 months ago |
| Edit | Post #289703 | Initial revision | — | 8 months ago |
| Answer | — |
A: Should self-answered Q&A use separate answers for different techniques/approaches (even if there's a caveat that applies overall)? > the answer is incredibly long It really isn't - though it might look that way because of the extensive use of large font headlines. I think it is a good answer - there's no problem in discussing multiple ways of doing something, addressing every angle. That's good engineering, rather. > Would... (more) |
— | 8 months ago |
| Comment | Post #289692 |
You could expand this further than the machine word by simply using an array of boolean, which is "language agnostic" and might even boil down to an actual a bit-field if you are lucky. Also, pretty much all languages support bool but not all languages support bitwise arithmetic. (more) |
— | 8 months ago |
| Edit | Post #289624 | Initial revision | — | 8 months ago |