C Review

[Henry Spencer]

My guess is that this reviewer is an academic (obviously he is not a
professional C programmer) who learned C a very long time ago and has
never used it much or made much effort to keep up to date with the
language.  Having said that, I should mention my background:  I first
learned C about 12 years ago and have been working in it ever since,
much of the time as a professional C programmer.

> "... 95% of all C programmers couldn't give you a good
> explanation of the term lvalue..."

This is probably true, but the concept is important and needs mention.
I see no convenient way to do this without the term.  What he probably
is thinking of is that experienced C programmers have forgotten the term
because they have an intuitive understanding of its implications.  True,
but irrelevant.

> "... Switch/case could be classified as rarely used and should be
> kept till later.

Nonsense, it's fundamental -- more so than some of the odder control
constructs like "continue" and "do{}while()", in fact.

> "... very few C programmers know much about sizeof..."

How much is there to know?  Anyone using malloc should be using sizeof.

> "... 99%  of  all  professional C  programmers  have no idea
> what typedef is all about, couldn't care less and probably
> won't ever need it."

Professional C programmers have to know what typedef is about, since they
will be called on to maintain code that uses it someday.  There is quite
a substantial subset of C programmers, particularly the ones who have been
around since pre-typedef days, who very seldom USE typedef.  Macros suffice
for typedef's most common uses.  However, there are certain jobs, such as
de-cryptifying complicated declarations, where there is just no adequate
substitute.  It is important that new C programmers know what typedef is
about, even if they don't use it often.

> "... 99%  of  all  professional C  programmers  have no idea
> what the comma operator is all about, couldn't care less and
> probably won't ever need it."

Again, professional C programmers have to know what it's about since they
will run into it in other peoples' code someday.  The comma operator is
not the most useful thing in C by a long shot.  It is convenient from time
to time, but its real importance comes in very specialized situations.
Again, this is something C programmers should at least hear about briefly
so that they can read strange code.

> "... Pointers to functions ... few C programmers understand
> them or would ever need them..."

Utter nonsense, there are quite a number of situations where they are both
useful and important.  Most C programmers have at least a superficial
understanding of them, although there are certainly some minefields when
it comes to complex declarations involving them (this is one place where
typedefs become very useful...).

> "... a C programmer never needs to know what a byte is..."

He's going to have trouble understanding the full semantics of frequently-
used primitives like "read" without some grasp of fundamental memory
organization, including the nasty word "byte".  People doing limited sorts
of programming with all i/o via stdio could get away without it.  People
doing serious C work, especially systems programming, and especially work
requiring reading other peoples' code, need to understand what bytes are
and how they tie in with things like read() and fread() and sizeof.
-- 
				Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
				{allegra,ihnp4,decvax,pyramid}!utzoo!henry