bunch of pedants

The regulars go on denying that C uses a stack. They should
read this:

<begin quote>
Any function in C may be recursive
(without special declaration) and most possess several "automatic"
variables local to each invocation. These characteristics suggest
strongly that a stack must be used to store the automatic variables,
caller's return point, and saved registers local to each function;
in turn, the attractiveness of an implementation will depend heavily
on the ease with which a stack can be maintained.
<end quote>

This was written by an expert in C.

True, there is no mention of a stack in their bible
Fact is, there isn't any C implementations that don't use
a stack to store the automatic variables.

Up to now, this people are unable to put forward a single
example of an implementation that doesn't use a hardware
stack (maintained by a register in a contiguous memory
addressing space)

Their first "example" was ARM and some Risc processors.

I proved them wrong.

Then they started tripping with IBM mainframes. Nope, I showed
them the do***entation of the IBM compilers for mainframes
where they describe the stack and its associated register (r13)

Then they started with the 8051. I showed them that that processor
has a stack (it has PUSH/POP instructions apparently) but it is
too small, so some compilers use an external stack.

Even if they have not a single example, they go on with bull**** of the
style "but an implementation *could* exist that... blah blah blah"

Facts are not im****tant. The C standard does not mention a stack,
and that is it. It is possible then to throw at unaware people that
asks questions in this group sentences like
"C has no stack"
"There is no stack in C"

Since they have no arguments, they discuss with tricks like

1) After you have proved them yet another time wrong, they will
    answer with the eternal sentence "The standard doesn't mention a
    stack" and the discussion can start from the beginning

2) After you have proved that the machine XYZ DOES have a stack,
    they say "But an implementation *could* exist" and the discussion
    can start from the beginning.

I decided that it is a waste of time to discuss with them. They just
repeat their bull**** without caring about what you answer to them

Personally I will not answer any more to falcolner and co. "C has no
stack" for them? Let it be.



-- 
jacob navia
jacob at jacob point remcomp point fr
logiciels/informatique
http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~lcc-win32