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Posts by Lundin
I'm experimenting with different operators and have a hard time understanding the outcome of certain expressions. I try to combine the ++ operators with other operators such as assignment in the sa...
In older C and C++ standards, the auto keyword simply meant automatic storage duration. As in the compiler automatically handles where the variable is stored, typically on the stack or in a registe...
Since this is all new, there might still be time to establish a consensus before this style feature too ends up "all over the place" (like upper/lower case hex, upper/lower case integer constant su...
C23 introduces the digit separator ' which can be placed anywhere inside an integer constant for the purpose of clarity and self-documenting code. These are otherwise ignored by the compiler when d...
The size of the "primitive data types" int, float etc is not defined by the standard. In practice, int is either 16 or 32 bits on all known systems. Because of the unspecified size leading to poor...
This is a self-answered Q&A meant as a C string handling FAQ. It will ask several questions at once which isn't ideal, but they are all closely related and I'd rather not fragment the post in...
The reader is assumed to understand how arrays and pointers work in C. You cannot understand pointers before you understand arrays, and you cannot understand strings before you understand pointer...
Generally, I would say: On-topic How to install, configure, trouble-shoot and use tools specifically meant for software development. Compilers, debuggers, IDEs and so on. Asking questions rega...
The auto feature was indeed mainly meant to solve long cumbersome template container declarations in C++. But when introduced to C23 - where there are no templates let alone template containers - i...
Normally, whenever a function designator (a function's name) is used in an expression, it decays to a function pointer to that function. typeof is one of those exceptions to the "decay" rules of C...
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 t...
Ignoring the numerous forms of undefined behavior that casting away const might invoke, the blunt but simple and standard solution is just to cast to (void*). char* foo (const char* str) { r...
Yes, it is guaranteed to evaluate to true. All variables with static storage duration are set to zero in case of arithmetic types or set to null in case they are pointers. The relevant part is C17 ...
The simple explanation would be that you simply don't have write access to the path, which is one possibility. Another weird phenomenon that may happen is that you are running a very old C...
Writing to the file on the HD is your massive bottleneck no matter how many threads you throw around. The limit is the physical memory access speed, not processing power. And since it is such a bot...
Yes, it is in practice always a character type and you can safely assume as much, both in terms of (g)lvalue access and in terms of strict pointer aliasing. If not, the compiler would soon render i...
There are three different, related concepts that are easy to mix up: null pointers null pointer constants the NULL macro Formal definitions The first two of these terms are formally defined in C1...
Regarding "snark" - it is very hard and subjective to define. Our overall code of conduct says "be nice", but where do you draw the line. On SO, general gruff attitude tends to be treated very diff...
Background I can see the need to use { } when implementing a function-like macro such as this one: #define HCF(code) fprintf(stderr, "halt and catch fire"); exit(code); Because if we use the f...
Void pointers are compatible with every other object pointer type and as mentioned in another answer, 7.21.6/10 speaks of the type of the pointed at object, not the type of the pointer. This is con...
At some extent, you can ask about (programming-related) software recommendations if you manage to narrow down the scope to something specific. A question like "which one of compiler x and compiler ...
Generally these questions are fine, though they should come with specific examples, so that they become clearer and can get narrowed-down. I've done a lot of self-answered Q&A here and the hard...
C offers two different styles when it comes to structs (and union/enum too). Either declare them using a struct tag only ("struct tag style"): struct my_type { ... }; struct my_type x; Or ...
A question should be closed when it cannot be meaningfully answered by someone who knows the topic. Which might indeed mean that the one(s) casting the close vote(s) would need domain knowledge. T...
I was told by my professor/book that computer programs use two kinds of memory and that all variables get allocated either on the stack or on the heap. Is this true? How can I tell where a variable...
