From -7892646990211321427 X-Google-Thread: f78e5,174aa7b34b06a51 X-Google-Attributes: gidf78e5,public X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit Path: g2news1.google.com!news4.google.com!news.glorb.com!newsgate.cistron.nl!news.nl.colt.net!colt.net!news-lond.gip.net!news.gsl.net!gip.net!newsfeed.icl.net!newsfeed.fjserv.net!peer-uk.news.demon.net!kibo.news.demon.net!news.demon.co.uk!demon!stump.algebra.com!devnull From: virtanea@mustatilhi.cs.tut.fi (Virtanen Antti) Newsgroups: comp.std.c++ Subject: Re: Is this really unspecified behavior? Date: Fri, 23 Dec 2005 05:58:46 GMT Organization: Tampere University of Technology Lines: 51 Sender: mail2news@demon.net Approved: fjh@cs.mu.oz.au (Fergus Henderson , moderator of comp.std.c++) Message-ID: References: <1132759176.368850.264850@g43g2000cwa.googlegroups.com> <1132933832.802917.153350@g14g2000cwa.googlegroups.com> <1133551647.532929.325730@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com> <1133583412.951239.208510@g49g2000cwa.googlegroups.com> <1133910546.716987.80030@g14g2000cwa.googlegroups.com> <0l5ep1ppfhdj5p1pcu7e4na4ub0vjajlq3@4ax.com> <87irtjy5sy.fsf@boost-consulting.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: news.news.demon.net X-Trace: news.demon.co.uk 1135317537 26582 158.152.254.254 (23 Dec 2005 05:58:57 GMT) X-Complaints-To: abuse@demon.net NNTP-Posting-Date: Fri, 23 Dec 2005 05:58:57 +0000 (UTC) X-Robomod: STUMP, ichudov@algebra.com (Igor Chudov) X-User-Agent: slrn/0.9.8.1 (SunOS) X-Virus-Scanned: amavisd-new at cs.mu.OZ.AU X-Received: (from fjh@localhost) by mulga.cs.mu.OZ.AU (8.12.10+Sun/8.12.9/Submit) id jBN5wk5Q017376; Fri, 23 Dec 2005 16:58:46 +1100 (EST) X-Path: comp-std-cpp-robomod!not-for-mail X-NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 22 Dec 2005 20:24:41 +0000 (UTC) X-Delivered-To: std-c++@ucar.edu X-Authentication-Warning: mulga.cs.mu.OZ.AU: fjh set sender to devnull@stump.algebra.com using -f X-Newsgroups: comp.std.c++ Xref: g2news1.google.com comp.std.c++:2889 On 2005-12-21, Francis Glassborow wrote: >>It doesn't seem like a very common occurence to me. How often does it >>happen? > > And I frequently see abuses of English such as incorrect use of an > apostrophe, misspelling and incorrect grammar. That does not lead me to > suggest we need to change English, but it does lead me to complain about > poor educational standards. On the other hand, they do change the grammar occasionally, when given good enough reason. For example when there are a lot of people using an incorrect form of some expression. The amount of abuse depends on the educational standards, but also on the complexity of the grammar. > Should we change the C++ Standard to allow 'void main(){' or teach > programmers to write correct code? What should we do to fix problems > with the inexact nature of floating point arithmetic? In each case the > answer is better education. Do you intend to solve all those nasty buffer overflows with better education? Are they all caused by incompetent programmers and could be avoided with better education? Some people have claimed in this thread that there's a big chunk of code out there which relies on unspecified order of evaluation and for this reason the compiler vendors don't want the standard to impose certain rules. It seems that there was a need for better education years ago. I don't think that need will go anywhere no matter how much we put resources to education. Let's look at two programmers: a Beginner and a Guru. Beginner is certainly pleased when the compiler warns him about unspecified behavior and ambigous statements. Guru would never write such statements nor rely on unspecified order of evaluation inside an expression, so such warnings never bother him. Thus, giving warnings or errors is clearly a positive thing. Where's the flaw in this reasoning? I admit that looser specification gives more freedom to optimisations inside compilers. I don't know how important this freedom really is, but if it's important, this is a valid argument for leaving things as they are. -- // Antti Virtanen -//- http://lokori.iki.fi/ -//- 050-4004278 --- [ comp.std.c++ is moderated. To submit articles, try just posting with ] [ your news-reader. If that fails, use mailto:std-c++@ncar.ucar.edu ] [ --- Please see the FAQ before posting. --- ] [ FAQ: http://www.jamesd.demon.co.uk/csc/faq.html ]