171–180 of 363 posts
I can't tell if this is serious. Surely if you're still using C now it's for legacy reasons. And if using it for legacy reasons you are likely stuck using an old C standard. So who will use C23?
How many of your preferred programming languages are written in C? Yes, many self-host, but a considerable number of them don't want the complications that can bring.
So much for C's simplicity in writing compilers.
> Support for calling realloc() with zero size (the behavior becomes undefined) OMG! Please do not add more undefined behaviour! We really need less UB, not more! What was wrong with 'implementation defined' as in C17? UB means that code that exists will now break if a new compiler decides that it can be smart. And we know how inventive this can get, right? Like removal of 'if(new_size==0) {...}' if the compiler can…
They'd better not convert that to undefined behavior! First, the specification for malloc() says you can call it with size 0 and it will still return a pointer to zero bytes; this means an array of bytes having size zero is legal. Second, having the compiler detect when realloc() is called with size zero changes what should be a library call into an intrinsic, whose very presence in the code is determined by the valu…
To be clearer: UBs (specifically the assumption that they don’t happen) get translated into constraints (since C’s type system is extremely weak UBs are a very valuable source of such constraints to optimising compilers), those constraints are then propagated (forwards, and backwards, and upwards due to inlining) and any path for which the constraint does not hold can be considered dead.
Finally C catches up with Algol 60 boolean types, it only took 60 years. Maybe in another 60 it will get proper strings and arrays.
C must be really amazing compared to Algol than. It powers today's computing infrastructure without having proper boolean type. Are there any widely used applications written in Algol?
Finally C catches up with Algol 60 boolean types, it only took 60 years. Maybe in another 60 it will get proper strings and arrays.
>Maybe in another 60 it will get proper strings and arrays. If you think this is missing, there's a big chance you don't "get" C. Also, if you don't know how to properly emulate strings in a safe way in C nowadays (for which plenty of code sample and librariesexist), your skills with the language are quite poor.
I have been "getting" C since 1992, across Xenix, DG/UX, HP-UX, Solaris, AIX, FreeBSD, Linux, Amiga, Windows 3.x,.....
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Performance is usually the upside. The downside is subtle bugs that can happen due to side effects of the statements being reordered between sequence points.
AFAIK compilers don't reorder if it would change the result.
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> seemingly spawned by Casey Muratori’s Handmade Hero series, Zed Shaw’s “Learn C The Hard” way It's kind of unfortunately, really, because both authors have very skewed viewpoints of C that are arguably quite incorrect.
What viewpoints are those, for those of us unfamiliar?
Casey Muratori is fundamentally at odds with how undefined behavior works in C and has opinions™ on how to fix the language to make things work the way he wants them to, when in reality he just probably wants another language.
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It's not like C++ is always the only alternative, see e.g. Rust which is way simpler
I agree that Rust is simpler than C++ (in some ways), but I’d say it is far more complex than C.
C is the only sane language left. It never changes and it lets us write code that just works. We can focus on getting things done and shipping rather than learning new features and Googling compiler errors. Learn once, ship forever.
Majority of CVE's are because of C memory model, which is fixed in modern languages. C memory model is the constant source of vulnerabilities, thus it better to write new code in a memory safe language, like Rust.
“Memory safety” (or lack thereof) is probably less ambiguous: usually “memory model” is the interaction between program and memory, specifically as it pertains to concurrency. And in the latter understanding I believe C has about the same model as C++, which is also the one adopted by Rust. And while it’s fiddly, it’s not a complete disaster.
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C must be really amazing compared to Algol than. It powers today's computing infrastructure without having proper boolean type. Are there any widely used applications written in Algol?
UNIX free beer, hard to beat.
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>Maybe in another 60 it will get proper strings and arrays. If you think this is missing, there's a big chance you don't "get" C. Also, if you don't know how to properly emulate strings in a safe way in C nowadays (for which plenty of code sample and librariesexist), your skills with the language are quite poor.
I surely get C, having to deal with its casualties in DevSecOps. I have been "getting" C since 1992, across Xenix, DG/UX, HP-UX, Solaris, AIX, FreeBSD, Linux, Amiga, Windows 3.x,.....