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Posts by Lundin
You are right, the on-topic page is confusing - trouble-shooting and general programming questions should obviously be on-topic! Perhaps we considered it so obvious that it fell between the lines ...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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 pointers ...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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 ...
Arguments in favour of "struct tag style": Less namespace clutter. C has a peculiar name space system where all identifiers belong to one of: labels, tags, members, ordinary. Struct tag style...
It depends. This boils down to whether or not the expression cast to void contains any side effects, such as accessing a volatile-qualified object or modifying any object. C17 6.3.2.2: If an ex...
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...
The problem with undefined behavior due to array out of bounds happens whenever we use pointer arithmetic, which is only defined to work within the bounds of an array. Where plain variables, "scala...
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 ...
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...
Preface: This is a self-answered Q&A meant as a C string handling FAQ. It will ask several question at once which isn't ideal, but they are all closely related and I'd rather not fragment the p...
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...
400 lines is not that big, it should be fine to post the complete program below the Code Reviews post category. I'd post it as separate code formatted blocks with one block per file indeed. A revi...
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...
You can use -Wconversion but you should be aware that it is very prone to false positives. It's a good flag to turn on during code review etc to shake out a few minor issues, but it's not a flag yo...
Luckily, we are in a position where we don't have to re-invent the wheel. We can see what went either wrong or horribly wrong at SO, then avoid making the same mistakes. Some common problems: Maki...
